


Still Flying

by andromeda3116



Series: As the Turn of the Worlds [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-26
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-20 18:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromeda3116/pseuds/andromeda3116
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Book Two of As the Turn of the Worlds. Azula isn't the only one on the hunt for the Avatar: the Parliament has sent out its own hunter, an Operative who works with a strike force of powerful, secretive men. Meanwhile, the crew gets desperate and accepts a series of damning jobs, and an expatriot of the Water Tribe comes back with an offer they can't afford to refuse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude: The Library

** As the Turn of the Worlds **

Book Two:  _Still Flying_

"When you can't run, you crawl, and when you can't crawl... When you can't do that..."  
"You find someone to carry you."  
-Tracy and Zoe;  _Firefly,_  "The Message"

 _prelude_  
At the Library of Wan Shi Tong in the city of New Dublin on Londinium

Officially, he had no name.

Officially, he and his men did not exist.

The Parliament had, likely without the Fire Lord's knowledge and certainly without the Fire Lord's approval, called him in after Admiral Zhao's surprising defeat at St. Albans, the half-forgotten rock that boasted the remnant of the ancient Water Tribes.

The Fire Lord's solution had been to send his daughter — the shining star of the Core, the Parliament's darling, the insidious and scheming Princess Azula — to find and neutralize whatever it had been that had caused it. While there wasn't much good to say about Ozai, he did at least understand his daughter; the Parliament coddled her, thinking he was cruel to send her off, but he and the Fire Lord, at least, knew that Azula was a much larger threat to the Alliance than any demon the Water Tribe could summon.

Of course, Parliament didn't, and so they had sent him to aid the — no doubt confused and overwhelmed — princess in completing her duty; an Operative who no one knew about, who was expected to let the princess take full credit for his work.

He'd done worse jobs, for worse reasons, and with worse people, but he wasn't sure he'd ever found it quite so  _distasteful_  as this one, simply because it was based on such an infuriating premise. Not that it was surprising, or even unexpected: Azula was a master of many things, but her ability to lie convincingly was probably her best skill.

Still, repulsive as the job was, it  _was_  his job, and he would do it properly.

The Parliament had been notably tight-lipped regarding the nature of Zhao's defeat, merely that it involved a state secret that was above even  _his_  pay grade. Technically, he was supposed to accept that because he was an Operative, and Operatives were meant to be concerned solely with the keeping of dangerous secrets; he wasn't supposed to care  _what_ the secret was, just that it was kept.

He, however, felt that approaching the problem like Zhao had approached it — too arrogant to entertain the notion that there were things he might not be able to handle, and might need to prepare for  _beyond_  loading his weapons — would simply end with the same result that Zhao had accomplished.

Which led him here, to the Library of Wan Shi Tong, the oldest and most comprehensive library in the entire multi-star system. It had managed the move from Earth That Was thanks to the personal intervention of the then-current Fire Lord, and survived the war intact through the personal intervention of himself, leaving the librarians so deeply into his and the Alliance's debts that he could wring them for any kind of information, no matter how rare, dangerous, or classified it was.

"This is all we have, sir," the weedy young man said, staggering under the weight of four heavy glass cases that served to preserve the library's oldest documents. "There are a lot of missing pieces, but they're... some of these are four or five thousand years old, it's a miracle they made it this long."

"All?" he asked, looking over the first case. The man nodded fearfully, like he'd done something wrong, and the Operative sighed. "Thank you very much for your help," he said sincerely, bowing slightly to the assistant to show that he wasn't offended. "If you could leave them with me, I will see that they are returned to their proper place as soon as I am through."

"Yes, sir," the young man replied, and bowed out of the room.

The scrolls were ancient, even by this library's standards: the oldest case was dated as 2000 AB and a question mark — two thousand years before the end of the Age of Bending, if the historian had been correct. From what he understood, the full series had once encompassed the origin and history of the Avatar, but now their story was spotty at best, and there was some question about the veracity of the information, due to its heavy emphasis on the mystical. He wasn't sure how much of it to believe, but he was willing to be open-minded, with the precious little resources he had at his disposal for this job.

It had not been easy to convince the Fire Nation's notoriously loyal librarians to give up the information that Prince Iroh and Princess Azula had both scavenged, but from what they said and the books the royals had focused on, he felt confident that he knew the identity of _what_  he was facing, if nothing else about it.

Unwilling to accept that and intent on finding something that would give him an edge over Azula, he had continued to dig, leading him here, to one of only three known sets of scrolls remaining that spoke of bending as a martial art, and the only one that spoke of the Avatar as a living human. If these scrolls couldn't tell him what the Avatar was capable of, nothing would.

The language was an archaic dialect that had finally died almost a millenia ago, but he had been given a comprehensive education by the Alliance from a very young age for this specific purpose, and could safely boast that he was one of a select few who could still read the old tongues. There were pockets of knowledge, high-end tutors and dusty historians or critically specialized linguists, but it was little more than a boasting point to them; even  _he_  hadn't found practical use for it.

Until now.

"In the time of Avatar Kyoshi," he mumbled, reading through the most recent scroll, which was paradoxically the most damaged and faded. It detailed an Avatar affiliated with Earth, a powerful woman who had commanded fans, like those madwomen from Shadow who had called themselves her descendants. The writer spoke of her with great reverence, listing her — admittedly impressive — acheivements with high pomp and circumstance.

It didn't, however, give him any detail as to  _how_  Kyoshi had accomplished those works. He assumed, judging from the type of actions, that she favored force over politics, which suggested to him that the Avatar was more of a physical power rather than a high-ranking state leader. That would hold with the legendary nature of the title, even if it seemed unrealistic to anyone familiar with a position of leadership — shows of force only served to  _remove_  power, not to weild it effectively and improve the lives of one's subjects.

After Kyoshi's acheivements was another history, of an Avatar of Fire by the name of... something unreadable — ink had, at some point in the distant past, been spilled or slashed over his name. His history was likewise smudged, where it wasn't cut out altogether, until the very end, where a date was given for his death: twelve years prior to the end of the Age of Bending, which coincided with the Avatar's disappearance.

A quick cross-reference with the other scrolls showed him the progression of elements: Water to Earth to Fire to Air. So the Avatar that Iroh had unwisely awoken, preserved in the Fire Nation's hands since this scroll was finished, was a twelve-year-old child trained only in bending air.

Long Feng smiled; this would be easier than he'd hoped.


	2. 1. Return from Exile

_part one_  
On the Firefly-class transport ship _Freedom_

Katara hummed as she made tea for herself and Aang. He had come to her earlier, a strange look on his face, and had asked if they could talk. He didn't seem agitated or afraid, so she wasn't worried, but there was an odd light in his face that she didn't recognize.

"What are you singing?" he asked, and she smiled. Since they'd been on the ship, he'd made leaps and bounds in learning English; there were still many words that tripped him up and he was only just starting to grasp contractions, but he could form complete sentences and finally communicate his feelings to people other than her and Toph. She was proud of him, how quickly he learned and how well he was adapting.

"It's a Water Tribe lullaby," she replied, placing the teapot on the dinner table between them, earning a glare from the Duke for interrupting their never-ending poker game, but Pipsqueak got up and grabbed a mug to join them. "My mother used to sing it to me," she explained, pouring the three cups of tea.

"It is pretty," he said, grinning, but then he looked into his tea intently. Abruptly, he turned to her. "I need to learn waterbending," he said firmly, and she sipped her tea, nodding.

"You're right," she said slowly, tapping the teacup with her fingers. "I found my mother's waterbending scroll at the Tribe," she started, although she tried not to talk about any of it at all if she could avoid it. "The next time we're planetside, you and I can learn some things from that. Zuko showed me a few firebending moves, which I  _think_  I can convert to a waterbending kata... I'm not sure, though, they don't feel at  _all_  the same. Iroh was better at that kind of thing. I wish he was here," she added darkly, and Aang frowned.

"Me too," he said quietly.

"Me three," Pipsqueak added, peering at his cards. "He was a much better dealer than this little punk."

The joke lightened the mood, and Aang laughed, a clear sound that made her happy to hear. Since they'd left the Water Tribe, he'd been rather morose about all that had happened and his role in it, but he was coming out of it with a strength that surprised her. He was still worse for wear, and she doubted he would ever be the boy he must have been before being frozen, but he had an infectious smile and a cheerful demeanor that he hadn't let the weight on his shoulders stamp out.

"Well, if you didn't cheat," the Duke muttered, and then yelped as Pipsqueak kicked him under the table, and grinned at them.

"Wanna join the game?"

"Not anymore," she replied, and Aang shook his head, eyes wide.

"I do not know how," he said, and the two mercenaries looked at each other.

"We could teach you," the Duke started suspiciously, but Katara huffed and shook her finger at him like a schoolteacher's reprimand.

"Oh, no you don't. I'm not letting either of you corrupt him."

"You should not worry," Aang said off-hand, shrugging, "Toph already corrupted me." She choked on her tea and tried to cough out a clarification, without much success. Both Pipsqueak and the Duke roared with laughter, and for a moment, Aang looked confused before suddenly catching on with a wince. "No, I meant — " he started, and then ducked his head, either to hide his embarrassment or his laughter.

"What's so funny?" Jet asked, rolling up his sleeves as he shuffled into the dining room, apparently having only just woken up. "That black tea?" he muttered, pointing at the teapot. Katara shook her head.

"Jasmine and green," she replied, and he grumbled.

"Am I the only person on this gorram ship who drinks coffee?" he growled, pulling out the aluminum canister of coffee grounds.

"Yes," Pipsqueak answered immediately. "You are, indeed."

"No, Toph drinks your coffee — oh, wait, I wasn't supposed to tell," the Duke said in a deadpan tone, because he was always getting into some kind of tiff with the mechanic and they both took savage glee in sabotaging each other in small ways. Jet turned, realization on his face.

"So  _that's_  where it all goes."

Katara rolled her eyes. Since she'd been with Freedom, she'd discovered altogether _too_  much about Jet and his addictions, which flip-flopped between nicotine and caffeine depending on which one he was trying to quit. She definitely preferred him without the reek of cigarette smoke, but he'd been in a nasty mood and had taken to fidgeting when he wasn't inhaling coffee.

It had been almost two months since they'd left the Water Tribe (and her father) behind, escaping to the safety of the black, but fuel was short and money was shorter, and they'd have to land somewhere before they ran out of food or killed each other out of little more than cabin fever. Aang had lately begun making himself a nusiance by skating around the ship on an air scooter because he was getting claustrophobic without being able to see the sky, which left the ship in a state of disarray that most of the crew didn't mind (but Mai _despised_ ; Aang was, for the fifth time, banned from her shuttle, after an incident involving air marbles and a teapot). He tried to stick to skating around in the cargo bay where there was less to disrupt, but he got antsy if he stayed in one place too long.

Now that he was speaking more confidently and knew the crew and their world a little better, he had told them that he was a nomad, or at least had been one before going into cold sleep, which explained most of his tension. That was, she suspected, why he was so eager to start learning waterbending: he was desperate to do _something_  new.

She, on the other hand, was uncomfortable at the thought of visiting other people. Her initial display of bending power at the prison had gone down as an accident involving busted pipes, but her breakdown at St. Albans had made the rounds on the rumor mill as an attack by a demon. She sighed; first  _freak_ , now  _blood-bathing demon_. She'd almost rather be called  _whore._

Most of the crew understood that she wasn't a danger to them, but they  _knew_  her — what might strangers think if they found that she was the demon from the Water Tribe?

What she had done to those people still terrified her if she thought about it too much. The way she had ended their lives by ripping the blood right from their veins... that wasn't supposed to be  _possible_. Even her limited knowledge of waterbending seemed to indicate that she needed water on-hand, and Aang hadn't heard of anyone bending blood — and he came from a world where bending was  _commonplace!_

What did it say about her, that she could?

"Are you okay?" Aang asked, pulling her from her reverie, looking concerned.

"I'm fine," she lied, and smiled.

* * *

"Cap'n says we've got a job," Toph said, tapping her feet nervously. Haru was rearranging the Infirmary, like always, and he turned to her.

"Well, that's good," he replied. "I'd like to get out of the ship, maybe eat some real food." His voice sounded like he was smiling, but she couldn't be certain unless she was touching him, and for some reason, the thought of going up and putting a hand to his face seemed a little... like a bad idea.

"Yeah, well, it's with Fanty and Mingo," she snapped, covering her anxiety with annoyance. "And let me tell you, they're obnoxious pricks from the bad side of Beaumond's bad side. Probably best you stay on the ship — they'd have  _fun_  with a Core-hound like you," she said, and she felt him shift.

"Core-hound?" he asked, sounding slightly offended. "What's that mean?"

She shrugged carelessly. "Just means you're rich," she explained. "Hell, I'm a Core-hound, you wanna get technical about it, born on Ariel and all. But don't," she said suddenly, holding up her hands, "go to tellin' anyone else. They don't know. I'm pretty sure I've lied about never being to the Core, too," she added thoughtfully.

"How do they not know?" Haru asked incredulously. "You're a Bei Fong, I thought they were famous."

"Yeah, in the Core," she replied, like it was obvious. "Maybe Katara or Sparky would recognize the name, but they haven't heard it yet, and you better not tell 'em. I've killed people for less," she lied, and then realized that he probably wouldn't think it was one, unless he had an incredibly shining opinion of her.

"My lips are sealed," he said, and she felt him hold his hands up. "Why did you leave?" he asked, leaning against the counter. She made a face.

"You have to ask? Look at me, do I look like a Bei Fong?" She sighed, and leaned against the bed, mentally switching gears from  _Toph_  to  _Mistress Bei Fong_. "When the Lord and Lady Bei Fong decided to have a child, they pictured an angelic princess, all sweetness and light, who would grow up to be the perfect, demure socialite, who they could dress up and show off and marry off to some wealthy family, a daughter just like Lady Poppy Bei Fong who would do just what Lady Poppy Bei Fong had done.

"Instead," she said, shifting back into  _Toph_ , "they got me. When they figured out they had a blind daughter, they completely freaked, kept me under lockdown. I wasn't allowed to go _anywhere_  - not that I, you know, listened," she added, and grinned. "I snuck out all the time, my favorite place to go was the zoo - you know they have badgermoles at the New Gaoling zoo?" she laughed. "I got to know all of 'em, even talked the zookeeper into letting me in to pet 'em once. 'Course, my parents heard about that one," she muttered darkly. "They... shut down even more after that. They were so..." she started, biting her lip, trying to find the right word, " _scared_ ," she landed on finally. "They were scared of everything, treated me like a doll they had to protect. It got old."

"I can imagine," Haru mused, moving around the bed. "Did you try talking to them about it, at least? It seems rash, to just... abandon everything and become a mechanic."

"I tried," she replied, running a hand through her long hair. "I told 'em I was perfectly good to take care of myself, have a life of my own. They thought my "show of defiance" meant they weren't teaching me how to be a  _real_  girl hard enough. They put a servant on to watch me twenty-four-seven," she snorted derisively, the memory still raw even after five years. "I couldn't even go to the bathroom alone, she had to be with me all the time, holding my hand like I was an invalid."

"That's... wow," Haru said, and he leaned against the bed next to her. "How'd you leave - and end up here? I've been wondering, but, well," he sighed, shifting like he was uncomfortable, "no one seems especially forthcoming about their pasts on this ship. It seems like everyone pretends they didn't exist before they joined."

"That's 'cause they do," she replied sagely. "I don't know much about Pipsqueak an' the Duke, just they've always worked together. I think the Duke is Pipsqueak's son, maybe? Or nephew, somethin' like that. I'm not sure, but they were here before me. I know the Cap'n and Bee served together in the war, and they were at Serenity Valley - " she heard him draw in a sharp breath. "Yeah," she said gravely. "They don't talk about it. I dunno, the ship is just... this whole thing, it's what people do when they got nothin' else, you know? I was in prison on Ariel, but I managed to sneak out and get to the docks when my guard fell asleep, and Jet was here and he was looking for a mechanic, and I'd never done it before but I bluffed my way through it, and well," she said, shrugging.

"You bluffed your way onto the ship?" he asked, and she could hear him smiling. She grinned.

"Yep. He got  _so_  ticked when he found out I'd lied about all the experience I had fixin' ships," she said, laughing at the memory. "But I'm still the best mechanic in the 'Verse, I just don't have any trainin'. The real question," she continued, leaning forward a bit and tilting her head slightly, "is what  _you're_  doing on the ship. We all got stories, reasons to be here," she said, "but you had this cushy life on Persephone. Why throw it away?"

She heard him take a deep breath and shift. "I... My family was pretty... bad," he said, wincing, "not bad like yours, but bad like... criminals," he explained finally, "bad criminals."

"Bad like 'so evil that Reavers tell stories of 'em to scare their kids into actin' right' or bad as in, 'they really suck at not getting caught'?"

"The second one," he said, laughing. "My father is still in prison on Londinium - yes, I'm from Londinium," he added, cutting her off before she could comment. She smirked; Londinium was only good for ponces and thieves. "Originally, at least. I left when I was seventeen, to pursue a career in medicine. Like you, I was... showing up my family."

"It's okay," she said brightly, "you can say you were flipping 'em the bird."

He laughed, and a little part of her felt warm at having made him laugh. "Well, that's how I ended up on Persephone. But... it never felt right," he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "But this ship... it... this sounds so stupid," he grumbled, "when I say it out loud."

"It was home," she said, reading between the lines.

"Yeah," he breathed. "It was just... home."

Mai rearranged her shuttle irritably - the little airbending brat had completely  _ruined_  two of her tapestries, and now there were great big gashes in the red silk, showing the ugly metal beneath and throwing off the decor in a way that made her twitch. The boy was  _not_  allowed in her shuttle anymore; if Katara wanted to pawn him off on someone so she could go have sex with Zuko, then she would have to find someone else to do it.

The door opened, and Mai swallowed a scream as her blood pressure spiked. "I seem to remember that there's a standing rule to knock before entering my shuttle," she growled before turning, already knowing it was Jet - he and the boy were the only ones who didn't knock, and the boy was too terrified of her at the moment to dare coming in here.

"Sorry," Jet replied insincerely, "I was just so eager to see your shining face."

She rolled her eyes. "What do you want?"

"Ooh, someone's in a bad mood - that Aang's fault?" he asked, pointing to the tears in her silken tapestries as he sat on her bench and propped his feet up on her low table. She glared at him. He  _knew_  how much she hated that.

"Yes," she drawled, hitting his feet with one of her accent pillows. He grinned - she noticed that he hadn't shaved in a couple of days, and a tiny part of her whimpered just a little. She couldn't deny it; even though all of her clients were well-to-do, proper, and ultra-respectable, she had a _thing_  for scruffy boys, and Jet wore scruff better than anyone she had ever met. "He was playing with... air marbles?" she shook her head and rolled her eyes.

"You keep doing that, your face'll get stuck that way," he said, chewing on his lip like he was craving a cigarette. He knew better than to smoke in her shuttle, though - the last time he had, she had pulled a knife and threatened to take his balls as compensation.

"You should really work on your nicotine addiction," she told him, and he rubbed the back of his head.

"I'm tryin' to quit," he replied sheepishly.

"You suppose the eighteenth time might be the charm?" she asked, raising an eyebrow, but internally she hoped that it might be. Jet already lived on the edge in so many ways - the last thing he needed was to add any other risks to his life into the mix. He shrugged and looked away, the way he always did when there was something he wanted to say but wasn't sure how to say it. "What's wrong?" she asked seriously, and he gave her a lopsided smile that made her stomach drop a fraction.

"How is it you can always tell when something's botherin' me?"

"You refuse to look me in the eye," she explained, making her bed to avoid looking at him and his grin and his  _scruff_. "Also, you barge into my shuttle unannounced and make small talk," she added. He laughed.

"Yeah, I guess," he conceded, then sighed. "We got a job," he said abruptly, and she turned.

"I don't suppose it's on a somewhat decent planet where I might screen some respectable clients?" she asked, but he shook his head, all humor gone from his eyes. There was something hidden there, something she could probably discern if she looked hard enough. Instead, she turned back to her bed. "What sort of job?"

"Illegal sort," he said, shrugging, "not sure of the details yet. We're meeting with the clients, pair o' twins by the name of Fanty and Mingo, we've dealt with 'em once or twice."

"And I should care because?

He made a face. "They ain't exactly known for hanging around safe places, or safe people," he said seriously, "dunno what they and their friends'd do to a woman like you. It's probably best you stay on the ship."

"Are you trying to be noble again?" she asked coldly, but he didn't smile, instead staring at her with burning eyes.

"Maybe," he said quietly. "Just best if you make yourself kinda scarce."

"I have no intentions of leaving the ship unless there's something better for me off of it," she told him, and it was more true than she liked. She'd flirted with the idea of returning to Sihnon at some point relatively soon, but she couldn't bear the thought of leaving  _Freedom_ , even though she knew, deep down, that she had to eventually, for the same reason she had left Sihnon: the family history, the shaking in her hands, the words on the doctor's chart.

Mai's clock was running out, and pushing her further off the ship with every  _tick_.


	3. 2. Interrupted Signals

(On _Freedom_ )

The job was weak tea, stealing some coin off a Blue Sun outpost on Lilac, but since Jet had Aang on board, he had to step lightly, and hungry as his crew was, he couldn't afford to turn down a job just 'cause it didn't pay enough. It had taken a bit of fast talking to convince Fanty and Mingo that it wasn't  _his_  ship the Alliance was itching to catch for being involved in the Water Tribe's Independent Uprising (he winced when he heard it called that) so they would agree to deal.

Lucky for everyone, all the Alliance knew for sure was that a Firefly had been involved, and there were enough of those still flying around that he could play dumb and probably get away with it.

Jet didn't expect trouble on such an easy job, but jobs had a habit of going sideways at random and Lilac was close to Reaver territory, so it paid to be prepared. He was forcing Toph to come with them even though she didn't want to, because he'd need her range of "vision" to make sure that no one was coming their way. She'd saved them on more than one occasion by giving them early warning, but she never liked doing it when the possibility of Reavers entered anywhere into the equation; it seemed they were the only thing that really _scared_  her, and even more than they scared the rest of the crew — which was  _saying_  something.

"Grenades?" Pipsqueak asked from the hall, and Jet heard the Duke mutter something in response. "We don't need  _grenades_."

"No," the Duke replied sourly, " _you_  don't need grenades. This close to Reaver space, I go in _fully armed_ , or  _not at all_."

"Cap'n," Pipsqueak said, walking into the dining room, "tell this idiot he don't need grenades."

Jet shrugged. "S'long as they don't go off and kill us all, I don't ca — okay, you don't need  _that_  many grenades." The Duke looked like a missile in the process of blowing up, dressed head-to-toe in fragments of old armor, dripping with spare magazines, three whole belts of ammunition (one for a weapon that Jet was pretty sure he didn't have), and at least a dozen grenades strapped all over his body. He scowled.

"Says you," he replied, trying to cross his arms but failing because his piecemeal armor and bullets were in the way. Jet rolled his eyes.

"Lose some o' that —  _lots_  o' that," he said, waving his rifle carelessly. "You gotta be able to move."

"You and Toph might not even need us, right?" Pipsqueak asked, joining him at the table and loading up his weapons, both of them ignoring the Duke's surly grumbles as he dislodged himself from the nest of ammo and kevlar. "It ain't like we're stealing a dragon's horde here." Jet waved him off.

"Safety in numbers, Pipsqueak," he said sagely, filling a fourth magazine for his pistol and considering a fifth. "I'd take Bee and Longshot, but we gotta have someone guarding the ship and manning the helm in case something goes south, and — now don't be broken up over this — but I don't exactly trust the Duke with runnin' my ship while I ain't on it."

"Ah, come on," Pipsqueak said, in mock offense. "A monkey could handle the ship easy, it'd be a nice challenge for the Duke."

It was hard to tell under the  _clunks_  of metal hitting the floor, but Jet was pretty sure he heard the younger gun-hand mutter _I hate you all_. He smirked.

"Nah," he replied, shaking his head. "Let Bee and Longshot take care of it. 'Sides, I think the Duke'd be terribly disappointed if he got all dressed up and had nowhere to go."

The Duke's grousing raised in pitch and got more articulate. "I can hear you, assholes," he snapped, and Jet gasped theatrically.

"Ah, damn, I'm sorry. I figured your teenage angst was cloggin' up your ears." Before the Duke could come up with a response, Jet went on. "We're about to be dockin'. Where's our little blind maniac?"

"Right here," Toph grumbled, shuffling in from the direction of the engine room, hair askew. "How long till we land?" she asked hoarsely, stifling a yawn, right before the ship touched down. "Oh," she said. "Well, then, I'll get ready."

"Hurry up," Jet shouted as she shuffled back out of the room. "We only got a short window to do this in!"

"Yeah, yeah," she replied, with a dismissing wave of her hand. Only a minute later, she returned, tugging an oversized t-shirt on over her usual top (that itself barely cvered her), a knife between her teeth and one of Jet's pistols in her hand. "Ready," she mumbled, stuffing the knife into her belt. It was longer than the shorts she had on.

(The Duke's constant mutters ground to a halt.)

"Uh, Toph?" Jet asked, raising an eyebrow.

"What?" she replied, strapping a gunbelt to her thigh and putting several magazines in. "This was the first thing I grabbed and you said it was summer on this planet, so I don't care. How far away is this station?" she asked, breezing away from the topic. "I can't feel it."

"A good mile east of here," Jet replied, deciding not to push Toph on the clothing issue. "They got plenty of surveillance set up, and we don't want 'em finding the ship too easy."

"No," Toph countered, crossing her arms. "Longshot's gotta keep the ship in a half-mile of me or I can't watch out for it."

"A mile's as close as we get," he replied, "and that's final. C'mon."

"I don't like this, Cap'n," she said fervently.

"None of us like this," he replied, and went on, cutting off the Duke's comment that he liked everything about this job all of a sudden, "but we do the jobs we can get,  _dong ma?_ "

* * *

Sokka had graciously taken the helm to allow Longshot and Bee to have some time to themselves. He hadn't especially  _wanted_  to, but he was the only person with any piloting experience other than Longshot, so it fell to him to warm the pilot seat and keep an eye out in case something went horribly wrong and Jet needed to be saved. Suki was sitting with him, and they were playing a completely non-rousing game of  _pai sho_  on the counterspace.

He was losing, and badly.

In the recesses of the ship, someone let out a shout, followed closely by a semi-masculine shriek, and then Aang flew onto the bridge, eyes wide. "I forgot to knock," he said, steadily turning redder and redder. "Mai was taking a sponge bath."

"Awesome," Sokka replied, twirling his lotus tile. "You see anything?"

Suki kicked him lightly, rolling her eyes. "You'll have to apologize to her," she said, and Sokka held up a hand.

"Suki, Suki, look," he countered, placing a hand on her thigh, which she glanced at before shooting him a warning look. He ignored it and went on. "You were never a teenage boy, so I forgive you for not knowing this. See, our young Avatar has just had his first experience with a naked woman. You mustn't rush things, this is an important development in his life. Now, Aang," he continued, turning to the now-bright red twelve-year-old, "how much  _did_  you see? This is a big moment, so you should try to — ow!" He turned to see where the protein bar that had just belted him across the temple had come from. Mai was standing on the stairs, wrapped in a bathrobe, scowling.

"How many times have I told you that you aren't allowed in my shuttle?" she asked dangerously, arms crossed, and Aang turned his one-two punch of puppy-dog eyes and a sheepish grin onto her, like either would actually work on Mai.

"We were playing hide-and-seek," he mumbled. "I thought no one would look for me there."

While Suki was busy laughing, he surreptitiously switched a few of the tiles around, so he wasn't losing quite so badly. Unfortunately, she saw him. "Hey!" she cried overdramatically. "Cheater! Aang, Sokka's trying to cheat!"

"Oh, no, whatever will you do," Mai droned, still scowling at Aang, who looked relieved that the subject was changing.

"Sokka!" Aang admonished, rushing away from the still-dripping Mai, but the grin fell off his face suddenly. "What is that?" he asked, pointing at the screen.

"Oh, it's a — " Sokka started to explain, and then froze at the shape on the radar, "that's a ship," he said dumbly. "Coming for — " he muttered, staring blankly as it took clearer form. "That's a ship — a — oh  _cào_ ," he hissed. "That's a  _Reaver_  ship."

* * *

(At Blue Sun Outpost 6519 on Lilac)

Toph's communicator let out a loud burst of garbled static that made them all jump. She cursed under her breath and hit the  _off_  button hastily, tapping her foot against the ground to see if anyone was coming, and then her communicator to see if it was broken. It wasn't — then why had it just buzzed her? Sokka  _knew_  he wasn't supposed to contact them on this job... unless it was something bad enough that he thought it was worth getting caught over, a narrow window that left her heart dropping heavily into her stomach.

"What the ruttin' hell is going on?" Jet hissed, and Toph shook her head, shaking in her fingers.

"It's not broken," she said. "Jet, something's  _wrong_."

"Damn right something's wrong," he snapped. "Your  _fèi wù_  communicator is what's wrong!"

"If I say it isn't broken," she replied in a low voice, teeth clenched, "it _isn't_  broken. So something's wrong on Sokka's end, and I was up to my elbows in the helm not three days ago and  _everything_  was shiny. Something's _wrong_ ," she repeated, slamming her communicator into Jet's hand. A tense silence fell, lasting for around three seconds, before Jet growled and turned it back on.

"Freedom, this is Jet, what the hell is going on?" he hissed shortly. Not a second later, static again burst through it, followed by Sokka's strained voice, broken by grainy white noise — an interrupted signal, she thought distantly. Something was messing with the transmission.

"Reavers," he gasped, and she was the only one who didn't react, "we're — air alre — y, they — hind us."

Jet didn't say anything else, but tossed the communicator at her and let out a burst of fire on full-auto at the ground. Toph yelped and jumped backward at the impact, as several people came running and yells echoed through the concrete walls; the sensory overload reverberated through her ears and bones, leaving her a little further disconnected from the situation. "You got Reavers incoming," Jet was shouting, "so you best find a place to hide. Crew, outside, now!" he barked, and took off running as the confused Blue Sun men let out yells, some running away from them and others following them, disbelieving.

Her perception slid back into focus and she began to  _move,_  at something greater than a run, propelled by animal fear pounding in her blood and in her head. A crawling prophecy began to form as the numbers worked themselves out without stopping to from full words: over a mile from the ship, only vehicle a hovercraft sixty feet away, could only push 30 miles an hour tops, take two minutes to get to the ship if you ignore acceleration, can't ignore acceleration or time to get to the mule or time to get  _on_ to the mule, so give it more like ten or fifteen minutes to get to the ship, Reaver gunships clear five hundred miles an hour.

The knowledge burrowed into her bones and coiled into a spring in her stomach: they wouldn't make it to the ship before the Reavers made it to them.

They hit the doors at dead run and sprinted for the mule, crashing inside and scrabbling over each other as they all tried to turn it on and get it moving, which wasted a precious ten seconds before Jet took over and began pushing her toward the ship — right before  _Freedom_  passed overhead, engines screaming, followed immediately by the high-frequency whine and low, pounding bass of the Reavers' gunship. Toph counted the seconds as they moved, as the noises shifted and distorted; the gunship had spotted them, and was leaving Freedom to chase them: the smaller, slower, and easier target.

Jet cursed violently and whipped the mule around to follow  _Freedom_ , even as the spring wound into Toph's body said it was useless. Static crackled over her communicator, lost in a strange, loud, ominous  _hum_. "EMP!" she shouted, and he jerked the mule aside violently as the pulse split the air where they had been seconds before.

Longshot's voice, broken in the crackle of white noise in her communicator: " — off the — ains," he said, "take her — ills, we're — rn swal —"

"Okay," she replied, feeling both completely removed from the mule and completely aware of everything else around her. She tried to re-center herself, mentally putting together the fragments of the message. "Jet, hills, barn swallow," she translated as the next EMP shot struck so close that she felt it  _thrum_  through the air beside them, changing the pressure so that her perception shuddered.

Reaver ships had a special sound to them, a special taste they left in the air, the way they rattled and shook and roared like a monster shaking its cage, about to come out of its skin. The monster growled behind them, too close, and Jet turned the mule sharply so that they skimmed a cliff face; rock shuddered to her left as the Reavers skimmed the cliff much closer than they did.

 _Freedom_  sang to them from above, coming around to pick them up as they rocketed haphazardly through the hills.  _Too late_ , Toph thought. It was too late. The Reavers were too close: even if they got onto  _Freedom_ , she'd never be able to get away from the gunship.

But it seemed like she was the only one who realized it; the Duke and Pipsqueak were steadily, uselessly, shooting at the Reaver ship, trying to keep them from getting a lock on them, Jet was flying like a maniac, and she was still sitting half-frozen in the passenger seat. She jolted at the sudden realization, and shook her head hard to clear the catatonic fear out of it — they might be dead in the water, but she was Toph Bei Fong, and she didn't take  _anything_  lying down.  _Not anything_ , she told herself. Not even Reavers.

She snatched Jet's machine gun and checked its magazine — three-quarters full — then turned and unloaded it at the gunship. Under the roar of engines and guns and wind, she focused on the sound of bullets striking metal, and used it to gauge the size of the ship — a large one, about a half-step smaller than  _Freedom_. Raiding party. Heavy frontward artillery, multiple exits: they'd do better to get  _under_  it than try to outrun it.

Toph opened her mouth to yell this, got halfway through the sentence ("Jet, it can't hit — ") and then it hit her, the focus she'd been forcing onto the mule blinding her to the surroundings.

The harpoon went in smooth just by her spine and opened once it had gone all the way through her abdomen; a scream louder than the jet engines tore out of her throat as it wrenched her backwards, and her hands floundered against the seats and walls, trying to hold onto anything that wouldn't go with her.

For one white-hot moment, the world stopped and her senses lit up brilliantly, so she was acutely aware of  _everything_ : Jet, one hand on the wheel and another holding her arm in a slipping grip —

— the Duke, mouth open in a snarling curse, with one hand shoving a grenade into its launcher and another holding her shirt in a slipping grip —

— Pipsqueak, jaw locked, with one hand on the trigger of his most powerful gun and another grasping her waist in a vice-like grip just under the scalding bolt of the harpoon —

— spare magazines scattered around the floor of the mule, bullets slipping out of place and dancing around their feet —

— hundreds of tiny metal casings and thousands of shifting grains of powder, singing in static as they bounced against the floor —

— her communicator firing bursts of garbled voices —

— the heartbeat of the Reaver ship, pounding through the cable drawing her in —

— the smell of ozone from the EMP —

— the taste of blood —

* * *

Everything was chaos as they all tried to keep Toph on the mule and break the cable that was pulling her towards the gunship — it was the Duke, pulling Toph's knife from her belt and hacking madly, who actually succeeded, and she fell, motionless, over Pipsqueak's lap.

 _Freedom_  rose up in front of them, cargo bay doors wide open, and Jet wrenched the little hovercraft upwards to meet her; they hit it with an awful  _screech_  and _crash_ , chased forward by the top of the Reaver ship, that hadn't been able to pull up or down fast enough to either hit or avoid them.

They leaped out of the mule before it had even stopped moving, Pipsqueak dragging Toph's limp form roughly along with him. Jet hit the ground and rolled to the side of the cargo bay, arms over his head, as the mule and the jagged sheet of metal from the gunship crashed hard into the far wall and finally stilled. The bay doors closed behind them and they rose away from Lilac in a sudden, deathly silence.

"Get the doctor," Pipsqueak shouted, and he saw Katara on the catwalk, face going white as he hoisted Toph into his arms. Jet ran forward, mouth dry — she was so  _tiny_  in the mercenary's arms. She carried herself so big and bad and dangerous, but without her boastful attitude puffing her up, she was just a little twenty-something in a shirt three sizes too big for her.

And she was his  _mechanic_ , dammit, the best mechanic in the 'Verse, and she couldn't — she wouldn't —

Haru took one look at her, and his face went blank and still as Pipsqueak carried her into the infirmary, flanked by Jet and joined by Katara. They laid her on the bed, on her side so as not to disturb the giant spear that was going straight through her, while Katara began rifling through the supplies and Haru washed his hands and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves with deliberate, mechanical motions. "Morphine," he said shortly, and she tossed him a vial before pausing, looking at the tap, and whirling around.

"If you can get that out of her," she said quietly, "I think I can heal her. Maybe. I can help," she added, voice catching.

"Just hold her still while I remove it," he replied, and she bolted over to hold Toph steady. Haru worked slowly to remove the harpoon,  _painfully_  slow — to make sure, Jet realized, that it was leaving in the  _exact_  same path it had gone in. As soon as he had it out of her, he threw it aside carelessly and looked up at Katara, calm in the way that only a surgeon could be. "Can you heal any part of this?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"I can try," Katara replied, and pulled water from the tap without touching it, which she held to Toph's back so that it glowed brilliantly, casting loud shadows against the walls. "I think it's helping," she said softly, while Haru started putting metal implements around the wound.

"I'm going to need suction," he declared, without looking up. Jet shook his head.

"It's a standard infirmary," Jet replied desperately, "we don't have anything that — " and then Katara swept a hand over the wound, pulling some of the free blood out of it and throwing it into the sink abruptly.

"That works," Haru said evenly, and then looked up. "Jet, get him out of here," he ordered in that same even tone, and he and Pipsqueak turned to see Aang, pale and wide-eyed, at the doorway.

"Aang," Pipsqueak said, walking forward and reaching out to him but stopping at the sight of blood on his hands. "C'mon, you've gotta go."

"Will she be okay?" Aang asked, and he might have been imagining it, but his voice wasn't quite _normal_  — it was like he was holding back something  _huge_. Jet didn't know if Haru could save Toph, but he  _did_  know that Aang was close to Toph and when Aang got mad or distressed, bad things happened — things like a whirlwind that ripped up his infirmary or a cyclone that killed almost ten thousand men.

"Yes," Jet answered firmly, steering Aang out of the room. "Doc's good at his job, he'll take care of her, and plus he's got a healer with him. She'll be right as rain in a coupla days."

He couldn't make it sound like anything but a lie.


	4. 3. Reputation

At Blue Sun Outpost 6519 on Lilac

"Jet, don't you think this is a little... morbid?" Pipsqueak asked, and he sighed through clenched teeth.

"Look, I don't wanna do this, but we can't go back empty-handed. Don't get paid if you don't get the goods," he replied darkly, rifling through the outpost's pathetic bank; they'd come back at night, after hiding out in a canyon until they were sure the Reavers had gone, returning to finish the job in the dead of night. He'd contacted Fanty and Mingo earlier with the news that they'd been hit by Reavers but no one was dead (yet) and they'd still get the job done.

Because that was Jet's reputation: Jet got the job done, period.

Without Toph to break the locks, he'd been forced to forget about subtlety altogether and shoot them off. He'd used a lot more ammo than he could really afford, but once his finger had hit the trigger, it was like he couldn't pry it away till his gun was empty. It had alerted the one lonely security guard left on duty — his coworkers must've gone home to bury their families after the Reaver attack — but Bee had knocked him out with her trusty chokehold before Jet could reload, and re-empty, his machine gun.

 _That's too much fire for this_ , Bee had told him,  _there's no call for an automatic_. She was right — the job sure as hell didn't need that kind of artillery — but she was wrong, too, because  _Jet_  needed that kind of artillery, something that would make enough noise to block out the echo of Toph screaming in his head.

It didn't matter, none of it mattered. They just had to get the cargo and get gone, do the job and get back to Beaumonde and get paid. Do the job, just — just do the job.

Never mind that one of his crew was laid up with a hole going straight through her, never mind that he still had the top bits of a Reaver ship scraping around in his cargo bay, never mind that none of them had any sleep, never mind that the Avatar had fallen into their laps and no one knew what to do with him, never mind that the Alliance was on the hunt, never mind that another war was brewing and it was all their fault, never mind that all they had left to eat were two protein bars and a box of raisins, never mind — never mind.

Never mind.

Do the job.

It was Jet's reputation: Jet got the job done. _Period_.

* * *

On  _Freedom_  


"How is she?" Mai asked, slipping into the door like a ghost. Jet looked up.

"Same, mostly," he replied gruffly. "Ship's falling apart and my mechanic had to go and get herself — " he cut himself off with a sneer. He kept  _trying_  to be mad at Toph, 'cause if he got mad at her he wouldn't have to be scared, and Jet didn't get scared over his caustic mechanic. Of course, Mai saw right through him. Even on a good day, he'd have to get up  _real_  early to fool Mai anyhow, but it wasn't like he was making a convincing job of it to anyone tonight, not even himself.

"She's strong," she said quietly, leaning against the counter beside him. This close, he could see she'd been trying to sleep, hair a bit out of place and shadows under eyes already smudged with old makeup, but she must not have been having any more luck than the rest of them. Toph's situation had the whole ship on-edge — even the always-cheerful Aang was silent and antsy, sitting in the cargo bay the last time Jet had seen him, making tornadoes in his hands and ignoring the rest of the world.

"Takes more'n  _strong_  to survive a harpoon to the stomach," he growled, running a hand through his hair. "Doc says she needs better antibiotics than what we got."

"And?" she prompted. He ran his hand over his face, sweat-streaked and dusty; but he was too tired and his head was too heavy to go about cleaning up just yet.

"Fanty and Mingo only paid a quarter up front for the Lilac job," he explained without looking at either of the women in the room, "only got us enough fuel to get there and back... we can't get that kinda medicine  _and_  get back to Beaumonde."

"But if she goes septic," Mai continued for him, "she'll be dead before we get there."

"And I can't just let her die," he finished. "Even if she wasn't one o' my crew — Toph's all that keeps this ship runnin' most days."

"I know," she said sardonically, "she complains about it enough."

Jet smirked, fonder than he wanted to be. "Yeah, but you know the secret?" he asked, leaning in conspiratorially. "She _likes_  it that way. Makes her feel important, gives her somethin' to be proud of." The smirk fell off his face as he watched Toph, laying still as death on the bed, and his gut twisted uncomfortably.

Toph was one of his crew, and that was more important than how good a mechanic she was. She was one of  _his_ , and he  _always_  looked out for his own.

She needed the medication — and fast, before she was too sick for it to work — but none of them had the money to get it; the only people who might've been rich enough to do it (Mai or Katara or Zuko) had all their accounts frozen or crashed outright now that they were outlaws like the rest of them.

All of that left one option: get more money, and get it now.

"So what are you going to do?" Mai asked, in that almost-challenging tone that Bee used sometimes, to snap him out of whatever world he was lost in, bring him back to reality.

"Ezra's not far from here — way the systems are right now, it's a lot closer'n Beaumonde," he replied, sighing again. "I've heard of a lady, operates out of Ezra's sky, she's always got some job opening."

"What's the catch?"

He shot her a wry smile — just like Mai, only person in the 'verse more cynical than him. In this part of the black, her practicality and glass-half-empty attitude were two of her greatest strengths. "She ain't exactly known for being overly friendly, or 'specially sane."

"I'm sure her gold glitters exactly like everyone else's does," Mai said, and he leaned heavily against the counter.

"And we can't do without it," he muttered, and then glanced at her. "You know you still owe us for springin' Katara, right?" he said, partly to change the subject but mostly in the vague hope that she'd emptied her accounts in time and had somehow just forgotten about it.

Mai scowled and stepped forward, smoothing Toph's hair, probably more to occupy her hands than anything else. He noticed that she was shaking, and it surprised him — did Mai really care about Toph that much? He'd never pegged her for the sentimental type.

"My accounts are still frozen," she said, and only the slightest change in tone told him that she was  _pissed_  about that. "I didn't expect it to take this long to — " she cut herself off and changed tacks before she said anything else in that line of thought, "I'm completely out of money right now," she said in a soft voice, and it occurred to him that this was probably the first time in her whole life that that sentence had ever been true.

It should have felt good, seeing the disgustingly wealthy Fire Nation noblewoman-turned-Companion completely broke, but it didn't. He didn't want to think about why.

"I know you're good for it," he said, shrugging. "Just don't wanna forget."

"I won't," she replied coolly, and they stood together in the silence, watching Toph's ragged, shallow breathing.

* * *

In orbit around the planet Ezra

Jet was  _all_  kinds of unhappy about this.

The only way to get into the skyplex was with a shuttle, since Hama was a paranoid old woman and would shoot ships right out of the black if they were anything bigger than a standard short-range; that meant he could only bring a couple of people on board with him, since shuttles weren't really supposed to hold more than four. Bee was a shoo-in, and with Toph and her lie-detecting skills out, it fell to the next best thing: Longshot, who was usually good at picking up on subtle tells. He didn't dare bring more, since he needed Hama too bad to risk pissing her off.

He'd heard rumors — everyone on this side of the system had — about the kinds of things Hama did if someone wronged her, things that left him on-edge as he walked through the halls, flanked by Bee and Longshot, all three of them with guns at their backs.

The door to Hama's office opened and he found himself staring into a tattoo — which he belatedly realized was attached to a face on a man so big he dwarfed Pipsqueak — and he only j _ust_  managed to keep a startled yell in his throat. He was dressed like an old-timey  _gladiator_ , too much muscle and not enough clothes, and Jet idly wondered what terribly embarrassing secret he was hiding under all that testosterone.

"Crow, let them in," a creaky female voice said, and the giant man stepped aside. The old woman was lounging in her chair and carving up a fruit with a little paring knife, and she might've seemed harmless if it wasn't for how _intent_ she was on digging that knife into the fruit, like it had personally offended her. "Don't mind him," Hama assured them. "He thinks it sets the atmosphere when he stands at the door and says  _boo_."

She waved the big man off and walked around the desk, peering at them intently. "Jonathan Reynolds," she mused, pulling a large, bright orange wedge out of the fruit. "I've heard quite a bit about you. What brings you out my way?" she asked lightly.

"Heard you had a job," he said firmly, and she nodded.

"Of course, I always do. Today, it's a train job," she told him, biting into the fruit. "There is cargo on the train that I want. I will pay you half today, and half when you deliver my cargo to Crow tomorrow evening. Sound reasonable?"

"Sure," he replied quickly, lusting over the mango. He'd had nothing but rationed protein for two months; the thought of fresh fruit made his insides ache.

"You're not asking what the cargo is?" she asked, watching him carefully. He shook his head, and she smiled tightly. "I've heard good things about you, Captain Reynolds," she said, "but I generally don't hold stock in rumors. Tell me, why should I pay you?"

Taken off-guard, the only response he could come up with was: ''Cause we need the money, bad as you get.' Instead of trying to backtrack, he plunged forward, banking on his reputation as a mercenary who'd do anything for the right price. He didn't figure Hama as the sort to answer to flattery, anyway. "Ain't got enough to make it any other place and I got someone who'll die if we don't get cash for meds quick."

She smiled. "Good, good. I like dealing with desperate men, less in the way of surprises. However, I have heard a few... other things about you," she said delicately, "that make me think I need to make a few things  _nice_  and clear before we can agree to a deal. Crow." She nodded to the big man, who slid a panel on the wall aside to reveal a window to another room, where an unfamiliar white-haired woman was strung up by her wrists, blood on her arms and sprinkled in her hair.

Hama waved her hand towards the woman, who convulsed like she'd been struck by lightning, her scream silent through the walls. "Now, I believe you when you say you're desperate, but I've known desperate men to grow ideals after getting paid," she explained in a low voice. "I trust we won't have any trouble with that kind of nonsense, will we?" Half-ignored, the woman's muffled screams broke down into sobs.

He clenched his jaw tight and swallowed the desire to pull out a gun and play the hero he couldn't be anymore. "No, ma'am," he answered, and was surprised at the confidence in his voice. "Got rid o' all my ideals some years back."

"You would be amazed," Hama said softly, leaning against the window, "at how hard those are to kill. Look at you now! All fired up with righteous indignation," she cried, each syllable hard and low with something like mockery. "Seven penniless years out of the war and you still think the world works in black and white. You're good and just, they're evil and cruel. Am I wrong?" He didn't answer, but she took his silence as one anyhow. "How hypocritcal... but then," she added, louder, shrugging, "I hardly have room to talk, do I? We may be evil people — " he flinched at the inclusion " — but at least we're  _fair_ , that's how I see it. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. I like what I've seen and heard about you, Jonathan Reynolds. I believe we're cut out of the same cloth."

He didn't dare open his mouth to speak. Even if he could form proper words, they'd only get them all killed, and — no matter what Hama was — he still needed the money too bad to fight for someone else.

"You think I shouldn't kill her, don't you?" Hama asked, leaning forward. When he didn't reply, she prompted him: "Go on, that's not a trick question. You don't. You can say it."

"I'm sure she's a very bad woman," he replied tightly, and after a moment of searching his face, Hama smiled like he'd said just the right thing, then stood up straighter and walked over to her desk.

"Enough about us," she declared brightly. "Let's talk about the job." She laid an old-fashioned paper map on her desk, pointing to two towns connected by a red line someone had highlighted before. "The train runs from Hancock to Paradiso," she explained, tracing the line. "You get on the train at Hancock, and have the cargo off the train by the time it reaches Paradiso. Take it to this place," she continued, tracing another line from Paradiso into the wilderness, "where you will hand it off to Crow and receive the rest of your pay. Nice and straightforward."

"I like straightforward," Jet replied, staring at the map and swallowing hard in an effort to get the taste of blood out of his mouth. "This a civilian train, yeah?"

"Correct," she answered breezily, and Longshot shifted in his peripheral vision —  _lie_. "Here are your tickets," she continued, pulling out an envelope and placing the tickets and a sheaf of credits into it, sending a jolt of nauseating greed down his spine, "one for you and one other passenger. I suggest you come up with a good reason to be on that train, in case something goes wrong. If you're captured, we've never met.

"Also," she explained benevolently, as she sealed the envelope and handed it over to him, "the first half of your payment, and — because I like you so much — I'm adding a little extra so you can get a day or two's doses of the medicine you need to save whoever needs saving. I'm not heartless, after all," she added with a smile. He wanted to throw it back at her, but he wouldn't be here at all if he had the luxury of refusing charity, even if it was only offered to seal her deal and put him in her debt. "The train leaves tomorrow morning at 0700 on the nose. I trust you can take care of the details."

She dismissed them with a wave of her hand, and Crow opened the door to let them out. He glanced at Longshot, who was staring passively ahead, and at Bee, who was peering at a bookshelf intently like she was  _real_  interested in reading the titles — if either of them had something to say to Hama (or to him), they were keeping it locked up tight.

"Pleasure doing business with you," he said in that same confident voice. Hama smiled again, and raised her mango in a mock toast.


	5. 4. Cloth

On  _Freedom_  


Aang shuffled into the cargo bay to see the Duke tinkering with a remote, right before the bottom of the cargo bay lifted up. "What are you doing?" he asked, and the young mercenary shrugged.

"Crime," he replied. Aang raised an eyebrow.

"Crime," he repeated, and the Duke nodded.

"Yup," he said, like it was nothing, "train job. They got trains where you come from?" he asked, and then answered his own question. "Prob'ly not. They're sorta like these ships," he explained, indicating to Freedom, "'cept they're stuck to the ground and don't move so fast. Jet and Bee are already on."

"Will this... hurt anyone?" he asked hesitantly. He knew Jet didn't exactly have a clean record, but hearing the Duke's matter-of-fact explanation still threw him off.

"Nah," he replied, waving a hand, "we're just takin' some cargo off."

"Oh," he said, and pursed his lips, "that's... good, then."

"What, you got a problem with us bein' bad guys?" he asked, sounding almost offended, and then shrugged. "Out here, there ain't so many legal jobs left. We do what we gotta do so we can eat. S'okay, Jet don't ever pick up jobs that are  _s'posed_  to hurt nobody. Sometimes, things get hairy and you can't help it," he added, shrugging again, "but usually we're just stealin' some shiny or transportin' some cargo under the Alliance's noses. Once, we had to transport a whole herd of  _cows_ ," he said, wincing. "That was fun."

"Why?" he asked, perching on an empty box. "What did they want with the cows?"

The Duke made a face. "I think they were dairy — most of 'em were girls, not, uh... steers? Hey, Pipsqueak," he asked, as the mercenary came in, dressed in a harness and a pair of goggles, "what d'you call boy cows?"

"Bulls," Pipsqueak replied, and the Duke nodded.

"Right," he said. "Bulls're mostly used for meat, but the girl cows ain't, they get milked and bred. The man shippin' 'em just didn't want the Alliance knowin' how many he had, so he got us to move 'em from his planet to another one."

"'Girl cows' is redundant," Pipsqueak mumbled, a hat stuffed between his teeth, as he tightened the harness. Aang tilted his head.

"What's your job in the... crime?" he asked, wincing at the word. Pipsqueak glanced at him.

"I get to jump on the  _moving train_ ," he answered tensely. The Duke grinned.

"He gets the _fun_  job," he explained, and then pressed a few buttons so that the bottom of the ship opened up and Aang could see the ground rushing by underneath them. He closed his eyes and the wind swept in over him, but he couldn't really enjoy it, mind stuck on his friend in the Infirmary, hooked up to a bag of what Haru called "antibiotics" that was supposed to help — but he didn't know if he trusted those little bags to save her.

He'd offered to find some of the herbs he'd learned about at the Air Temple, and make up a poultice that he'd seen cure someone who'd been gored by a komodo-rhino after their skin had started going black, but Haru had refused, dismissing him outright with a roll of his eyes, and Katara had explained that they weren't in any position to get those herbs. She, at least, had thanked him for the offer and suggested that they find some at the next stop, even telling him that she'd like to learn his healing techniques, but he thought she might have just been humoring him.

He hated feeling useless when people he cared about were hurting. Haru didn't get it, probably hadn't felt useless in his whole life, but Katara understood, and she was on his side, helping him think of ways to make Toph feel better when she woke up. Neither of them had come up with any really good ideas yet, but the effort was nice.

The Duke kept talking, shouting over the noise, "Cap'n and Bee are in the train, and they'll open up the top o' the compartment with the cargo in it, Pipsqueak jumps down into the train, then we haul all the cargo, plus the Cap'n and Bee, right back up here. Easy."

"Have you ever done this before?" Aang asked absently as the Duke hooked Pipsqueak up to a metal cable running into the roof of the cargo bay, breathing easier in his element and letting it carry away some of the weight on his shoulders, if only for a few minutes.

"Nope," the Duke replied matter-of-factly, "but it should work."

"Speak for yourself," Pipsqueak said, and then appeared to be praying for a moment. He looked at them. "Wish me luck," he said, and the Duke waved him off.

"Good luck!" Aang yelled as Pipsqueak jumped onto the train.

* * *

"Scrolls?" Jet asked, glancing at Bee, who nodded. "What kinda scrolls?"

"I don't know, sir," she replied, looking up and down the train car. "They were old, that's for sure. All stacked up nice an' pretty on the top two shelves."

"Huh," he grunted, thinking hard about that, why Hama might keep a bunch of ancient scrolls in her office. It didn't fit — Hama, the historian? No, they were missing something here. But he didn't have time right now to think about anything but the job. "Well, we'll figure it out later," he said quietly, "Longshot said he'd be pulling over the train at — " he paused as someone passed them, coughing violently, " — at 0750 on the nose, we're running low on time. Let's get started."

"Yes, sir," Bee replied, and stood up, shouldering the bag of smoke bombs, rope, and power tools they had packed into clever hiding places that wouldn't show on the X-ray screener, one of Bee's ideas that had, like most things that came out her bag of tricks, worked beautifully. She followed him to the end of the car (which seemed full of sick folks, all coughing and sniffling) and into the next one — where they both froze, looking a batallion of purple-bellies in the face.

Jet blinked. "Hey," he said jovially, smiling and mentally preparing a speech about  _this isn't where I parked my ship_ , when the other side opened and a small family shuffled through, so they took a leaf out of their book and passed straight through the compartment, nodding friendly-like at them as they passed and the oldest stifled a cough. Once on the other side, into the compartment they were supposed to find the cargo in, he looked at Bee. "I like this job better already," he muttered, grinning cheekily, and she gave him one of her  _looks_ , the tried-and-true  _you're not funny_  glare.

"You're not even a _little_  worried about the car full of Alliance men?" she asked, and he shrugged.

"Are you kidding?" he replied, while they set a smoke bomb to go off if the door opened. "Look, we're robbing a train — you have any idea how long I've wanted to do that? Jesse James was my  _hero_  when I was a kid. And! We get to do it while makin' the Alliance look like a buncha bumblin' fools! This is the best job ever," he said, grinning, trying too hard to fake cheerful. If Bee noticed — and he was sure she did — she let it slide. "Hell, I'd do it for free."

"Wonderful," Bee said, checking for the right cargo while he began unscrewing the top of the compartment. "I'll take your share, then. Me and Longshot been wantin' a good beach vacation, your generosity is really gonna help make that happen."

"You're hilarious," he drawled, catching a screw and throwing it at her. "A real bucket o' laughs."

"Hey, you said you'd do it for free. You don't get take-backs on that kinda thing," she muttered absently, pulling aside a tarp that covered a set of boxes. "Here's the cargo."

"Shiny," he replied. "Help me get this — " he grunted as the top of the train car fell into his hands and he almost fell over under the sudden weight. Bee came over to help him move it aside, and not three seconds later, Pipsqueak rolled into the train car, breathing heavily and glaring at them for no readily apparent reason. He unhooked the harness from Pipsqueak's back and hooked it to the netting that Bee was wrapping around the apparently-rather-light cargo.

Only a minute and a half or so later, all three of them were rising back up into the ship again, no one on the train any the wiser.

The shiniest job they'd ever run. He was too proud to really stop and appreciate the irony: the one job he'd almost refused and all-but openly sabotaged at least three times through the planning process was the first one they'd run in over a year to go off without a hitch. Just more proof that karma didn't exist.

Back in the ship, they unhooked the cargo and Bee caught him by the arm. "You think anyone down there might've ID-ed us?" she asked seriously, and he shrugged.

"Dunno," he replied airily. "Not too worried either way. We never run jobs on this system anyhow." Bee didn't seem to share his optimism, but he ignored her and turned to the comm. "Longshot," he said into the comm, "we're on, take us to the meeting point."

"What did we steal?" Aang asked, hopping off a tower of boxes behind him and making Jet jump.

"Where did you  _come_  from?" he cried, but went on without waiting for an answer because Aang was always hanging around in places Jet was sure no one could ever get to. It must have been an airbender thing — he was working on his theory that the little Avatar could fly, and hadn't found any evidence yet that he was wrong. "I didn't ask," he said with a shrug, and caught Aang's hand as he reached out to touch it. "Paws off, _xiao hóuzi_ ," he said, using Toph's affectionate nickname (it was just so  _apt_ ) and pushing him in front of him as he made his way back up to the bridge. "I want you stayin' outta sight, got it? Hama Sila ain't known for being nice, and she'd  _love_  to kidnap you and sell you off to them that want you dead."

"I can take care of myself," Aang said, crossing his arms, and Jet rolled his eyes.

"You're still a kid," Jet told him, arms crossed. "And when you're on my ship, you're my responsibility. You don't like it, you can find another ship to fly with."

"Maybe I will," Aang replied, but smiled impishly. Good that he was getting cheerful now that Toph wasn't quite so close to death's door — sadness didn't  _fit_  on the little monkey's face. "I'll get my own ship," he continued. "And fly around the 'Verse helping people."

"Yeah, and you'll starve to death," he countered, and received an inexpert glare. Anger didn't really fit on his face either, Jet decided. "Quiet,  _xiao hóuzi_ ," he said, holding up a hand, "I don't wanna hear it. Longshot, let 'em know we've got the goods and we'll be there posthaste. Aang, go hide out in Katara's shuttle while we're doing this job. Don't want Hama hearin' you're on the ship."

Aang sighed dramatically, but went without any vocal protest.

Once they had landed, he and Longshot went down to the cargo bay, but Bee met them halfway, her face clouded. "Sir, we have a problem," she said seriously.

"What?" he asked. "Don't tell me we got the wrong goods."

"No," she replied, walking him into the cargo bay, where Haru was standing with Pipsqueak and the Duke, one of the boxes open in front of them. "The cargo — it's medicine, sir," she told him quietly, gesturing to the rows and rows of tiny vials nested in styrofoam packing. "Pascaline-D," she explained, "Haru looked it up on the Cortex — the people on this planet all suffer from some nasty coal-mining disease you get in your lungs and don't get rid of, that's why they... all the coughing," she said desperately, pleadingly. He knew where she was going with this, and he pressed his fist against his lip hard. "Hama's gonna sell it on the black market, it goes for a hell of a price. But those people  _need_ this medicine."

Jet stared hard at the cargo, but shook his head. "We can't back down on the deal. Bee, we _can't_ ," he repeated, as she started to protest. "We're already at the meetin' point — that big tattooed freak'll be walking through the doors any second now. It's too _late_. We knew we were gettin' in with a bad woman when we started, no sense in growin' a conscience now. 'Sides, you tellin' me you  _want_  to be on Hama's bad side?"

"No, but these people — "

"Will live," he cut her off, and snapped the box closed, stomach rolling. He didn't like doing this, but he and his crew hadn't eaten a proper meal in two months, Toph needed the antibiotics Hama was paying for, and the ship was running on the bare bones of its second-to-last fuel cell. If they backed out of the deal now, they'd be drifting, starving, and setting Toph's body out in a space burial, all while waiting helpless for Hama to come knocking on their door to kill the rest of them. It was finish the job, or  _be_  finished.

He didn't like leaving the people with no choice but to buy back their meds at Hama's prices, but it was them or his crew.

And Jet  _always_  looked out for his crew.

"Jet," Bee started, incredulous, but he shook his head and turned as someone knocked at the airlock door and Crow walked in, all threatening, glare set on his face.

"The goods are intact?" he asked, and Jet gave him his best shit-eating grin.

"Perfect condition," he replied cheerfully. "Job went off without a hitch."

"Good," Crow said, handing over a new envelope large enough to keep official documents in and waiting as he checked it over to make sure everything was there: a neat pile of credits three rows high and two rows deep, actually a fair bit more than looked right. Flushed up against the side was a letter-sized slip of paper — Hama worked so low-tech, he didn't think anyone used ink and sheets of paper for anything other than fancy certificates anymore — which he slid out and read, confusion slowly shifting to nausea.

_Medicine is expensive, I know, so I've added enough for two full rounds of vancomycin to the amount already agreed upon. My best wishes to your ill crewmember, may he or she have a swift recovery._

"Is everything good?" Crow asked, in the tone of someone who didn't care if the answer was yes or no. Jet slid the paper back into the envelope and tried to smile, but failed.

"Yeah, it's great. Tell the Lady Sila — " _that she can burn in hell, that I won't be in her debt, that I don't want anything to do with her so-called charity_  " — that we said thank you for the extra kindness."

Cut out of the same cloth, indeed.

Sometimes, he even made himself sick.


	6. 5. Betting Against the Odds

On  _Freedom_  


"Scrolls?" Katara asked, and Bee nodded.

"Old ones," the first mate replied, expression strained, gesturing with a spoon and prodding her plate of protein mistrustfully. "Lots of 'em, too."

Katara thought about that for a long moment — the old woman's surname was Sila, the same name as a Water Tribe god of wind that she'd heard stories of from Gran-Gran when she was young. And if the woman was Water Tribe, they might be waterbending scrolls. It made sense, but how was she supposed to get her hands on them?

"Don't even start," Zuko said, startling her out of her reverie. "I know what you're thinking. There's no way," he insisted, and she scoffed.

"You have no idea what I'm thinking," she huffed, but she knew by the look on his face that he did. He looked worried, and a little annoyed (although he was always annoyed, with Jet and with the ship and with the food and with Toph and with — everything), and looking straight through her, something he was starting to get disturbingly good at. "Okay, but what if they  _are_  waterbending scrolls? Toph... I could help her."

"It's not worth the risk," he said. "That woman's too dangerous."

"Well, I'm pretty dangerous, too," she replied fervently, and he made a face.

"I'm not losing anyone else — " he started, but Bee cut him off before the conversation could turn to Iroh, prodding Katara with her spoon and talking loudly.

"Not this kind of dangerous," she said gravely. "You didn't see the woman she had hanging in her torture room."

"I know," Katara sighed. "But there's so much more I could be doing for her if I just..."

"You're still learning," Zuko said firmly. "It takes time."

" _You're_  lecturing  _me_  on patience?" she teased, trying to smile, and he rolled his eyes.

"I'm not  _lecturing_ ," he grumbled. "I'm just... saying."

"Right," she said lightly, resting an elbow on the table and leaning on it. "You're not lecturing, you're just telling me important things in a teacherly tone." She looked to Bee, eyes wide and innocent. "Two completely different things, right, Bee?"

"Mm," Bee replied, taking a bite of the protein as though she was really hoping it would suddenly turn into a steak, or at least real food, "most definitely. Lecturin' needs a podium," she added, and Katara snickered.

Zuko scowled and looked away, but she poked him in the side. "Hey, grumpy-pants, we tease you 'cause we  _like_  you. Don't get all huffy on me."

"I'm not huffy! That isn't even a word!"

"Sure it is. Means snooty," Bee chimed in, and walked over to the kitchen island, ignoring Zuko's glare. "I'm making some hot cocoa. You want any?"

"We have cocoa?" Katara asked incredulously, glancing at her, and she winced.

"Well, no," she replied, "but we  _have_  had a box of chocolate flavoring for about a century, and I was thinking we could maybe mix it with protein and dissolve into water and it might taste a little less like ass."

She cringed, and glanced at Zuko, who just looked disgusted. "Um, thanks, but I'll pass," she said, turning so that she was facing the island and leaning against the table. "I could make tea? That's sure to taste better than... that. Probably not as good for you, though."

"This stuff is good for us?" Zuko asked, pretending to be surprised. "Because it tastes like dirt."

"It's got all kinds of essential vitamins," Bee said, pulling out the chocolate flavoring and measuring out a careful teaspoon of it to mix with her protein. She stopped, looked at it, and then looked back at the chocolate flavoring and just poured the whole thing into the cup, setting it on the burner. "Immunizations, minerals... it's all the stuff you need food for, except... without the food. At least it doesn't go bad," she added, making an obvious effort to look on the bright side.

"Well, there is that," Zuko said sarcastically, and Katara nudged him admonishingly.

"You know, there is this thing that some of us try," she said, in a tone of sudden realization, "it's called  _optimism_." He rolled his eyes.

"I tried that once," he replied, leaning back in his chair. "And then I discovered pessimism. We go together much better."

"I think you're just grumpy," she muttered, turning away and sighing dramatically. "You just hate that I've figured you out."

Bee interrupted them with a  _huge_  coughing fit as she tasted the hot cocoa, making a face that suggested she was trying to  _will_  the taste away.

"Experiment failed?" Katara asked unnecessarily, but she actually shook her head.

"It tastes exactly like I expected it to," she replied weakly, eyes watering. "It'll be  _great_  when I hit up Pipsqueak's vodka stash."

And for the first time since they'd landed on St. Albans — Zuko  _laughed_.

* * *

On Beaumonde

Suki peered at Sokka in the darkness of the room, shadows long on the wall.

She wasn't sure where they stood on the spectrum of romance — friends with benefits, just sleeping together, in a relationship, or, heaven help her,  _in love_  — she couldn't pin it down. She hardly knew what love even  _was_ , and she was only good at dealing with boys when she had a weapon in her hand or acid on her tongue. Boys were always scared of her, and so were any girls she'd been interested in, too... romance just wasn't what people saw when they looked at Suki.

All she really knew about love was what she'd learned from her parents, which was "love will make you blind," and from the Companion House, which was "love will ruin you."

She sighed and ran her fingers lightly over his shoulder — he usually slept like a log, if he slept at all, and she figured that she could probably scream in his ear and he wouldn't wake up right now. She envied him; she was too agitated to close her eyes, and sleep never seemed to hold onto her.

On his chest were a series of badly-healed scars, a thousand details that she didn't know about him, and she traced a few of them idly. She knew his  _story_ , the clinical version, like she'd read it in a history book, but  _Sokka_  was more than a collection of words from his past — Sokka was the adorable, dorky boy who had won her affection and nearly hanged with her in the palace, but he was also the inhuman creature who had beaten Admiral Zhao with the butt of a rifle until there wasn't anything left to tell who it was.

She didn't  _want_  to be able to reconcile the two, but she knew that demon, the  _taste_  of that emotion. Family  _mattered_  to Sokka, the same way her warriors had once  _mattered_  to her, and after Katara had crashed to the battlefield with the tower, he had just — broken. That Katara  _hadn't_  been dead was probably the only thing that had saved him from becoming his father, chasing vengeance down and further down, into the black hole. Suki had managed to escape its gravity once, but she had been trained her whole life in how to shut down on the desire to scream and the need to  _make them pay;_  she was the exception, never the rule.

She wanted to save him from ever falling into it again, teach him how to survive it, but she just didn't know what to  _do_. Her "system shut down" function was a failsafe she'd been taught from such a young age that she didn't even know how she did it anymore; it had become  _instinct_. Even then, it had taken everything she had, and a long string of false starts, to leave Shadow behind — was it even possible to save someone else when she barely had the strength to save herself?

She'd already taken so many blows, one more might just be the death of her; reaching out to this save-the-'verse cause she'd fallen into — reaching out to this man who wasn't afraid of her or trying to change her — was  _such_  a risk, a terrifying risk, a bet she knew better than to make. Suki knew the numbers, she knew the odds, and she knew what would happen when — if —  _when_  — they failed. Suki knew a losing battle when she saw it, but she was maybe the only one.

Was it worth it?

(Was  _he_  worth it?)

They were on Beaumonde. This was her chance to leave, and probably the last.

"What's wrong?" he asked suddenly, voice rough, and she started — when had he woken up? — and opened her eyes. He was watching her as intently as she had been watching him.

"Nothing," she replied, smiling, but he didn't smile back.

"You're lying," he said, propping himself up on his elbow. "What's wrong?" he repeated, and she glanced away.

"I was just — I was thinking about — all of this, all of — St. Albans," she answered hesitantly, quietly, and he looked down, but continued to trace circles on her shoulder.

"What I did to Zhao," he said bluntly, and then fell back onto his back, running a hand through his hair. "I don't — I don't even remember," he croaked. "I just — "

"I know," she cut him off, and he looked at her. "It's all a blur, you can't even  _focus_  on it. It's like something else took control of your body. I've — I know."

He watched her carefully, and then swallowed. "Kyoshi Warriors operated out of Shadow," he said softly, apparently randomly, a question as much as a statement, and she blinked it all back, drank it down, swallowed memory whole.

"Kyoshi Warriors are gone," she replied evenly. " _Long_  gone, now, didn't even make it to the end of the war."

"How many are left?" he asked, and she turned to the wall, dried salt and the memory of iron on her lips.

"...One."

He pulled on her shoulder, turning her back toward him and kissed her, hard and intense and filled with things unspoken. She was the last of her kind, a lineage that stretched back almost four millennia, and  _she_  was the weak link, the reason they had fallen. The things she  _didn't_  tell him explained everything: her shame, her memory, her fear, her  _hate_ , fires still smoldering under her skin, over seven years after the fact.

The next morning, a pair of golden fans was sitting on the pillow.

* * *

At the Staggering Naga bar in Xīnbei

Jet scowled as he made his way through the bar; this was a much seedier dive than the Maidenhead (which was  _saying_  something) and even  _he_  felt a little unsafe, but he was pretty sure he'd never be allowed in the Maidenhead ever again. Almost as soon as he walked into the room, a woman with white hair stopped him — white hair — that hit something on his memory, something other than Diana, standing in front of him. He raised an eyebrow; she didn't look like herself.

"Jet, I'm  _so_  glad to see you," she gushed, but it wasn't her usual lilt. She sounded  _scared_. "I need your help."

"No," he replied shortly, pushing past her. She grabbed his arm.

"I have payment," she insisted, and he shrugged her hand off of him. It was bad enough that he'd had to deal with Hama — Hama!  _That_  was where he'd seen white hair recently, the woman Hama had been torturing.

"Pretty rare hair color," he said slowly, and she scowled.

"It's a dye job," she snapped. "Will you help me?" she pleaded. But he was all charity-ed out, and wanted neither to give nor receive.

"Sorry, sweetcakes. Find some other  _wángbādàn_  to con," he said, stalking over to the table Fanty had told him they'd meet him at, although they weren't there yet.

"Jet!" she cried, but he waved her off.

"Bye, Diana," he said pointedly, and she let out a frustrated sound before storming off. Bee and Longshot joined him at the table, both watching Diana march away curiously. "She wanted my help," he explained, shrugging. "I'm not that stupid."

He peered at Bee — since the train job, she'd been closed off to him, but she must have talked it over with Longshot and decided to put it behind them. He hoped she had forgiven him; it might help him forgive himself.

As though she could read his mind, she smiled at him and elbowed him in the side. Longshot, on his other side, smirked. "Is Jet  _brooding?_ " he asked, a teasing note in his quiet voice. Bee grinned.

"I think he is. What, you think that acting like Zuko will make one of our Companions suddenly fall madly in love with you?" she asked, poking him in the side, right where he was ticklish. He jerked away from her, but then Longshot poked him in the other side.

"This is insubordination," he growled, as they tickled him, but couldn't keep the relieved smile off his face. "That's what this is.  _Mutiny!_ "

* * *

Suki lounged at the bar with Sokka and Ty Lee; Katara, Zuko, Aang, and Haru were back on the ship, and Mai was running some kind of errand involving her bank account, the nearest government building, and her knives, while Pipsqueak and the Duke played a drinking game with a few strangers, everyone trying to forget the missing piece. Toph was still asleep in the Infirmary, and although she had stabilized with the medication Jet had gotten for her, nothing else had really changed.

It made Suki's stomach clench to think about — Toph had grown on her since St. Albans, and it just wasn't  _right,_  for her to be so still and quiet. Toph was supposed to be boastful and loud and taking over the whole ship with her presence, not... this.

"She'll be fine," Ty Lee said suddenly, shattering the silence. "I just know it," she added, and then smiled hugely. Ty Lee was good at that: smiling when there wasn't anything to smile about. "Haru fixed her up really good, and with Katara there helping out... plus, Toph's  _way_  too belligerent to die like this," she said, then turned and took a menu, staring hard at it. "She'll be fine," she repeated, and Suki wondered if she found it any more convincing than they did.

"Who'll be fine?" someone said, and Sokka and Suki both stiffened. It was the white-haired beauty that she had hit the last time they were on Beaumonde. The woman smiled brilliantly, if insincerely. "No hard feelings, darling," she told Suki, and then looked to Ty Lee. "What's gone wrong this time?"

"None of your business," Sokka replied tightly, and the beautiful woman smiled.

"Sokka, I'm  _so_  happy to see you," she trilled falsely, desperation badly hidden, "I was  _just_  thinking that I had this  _fantastic_  job offer, but no one around to deal with." She leaned against the bar and studied the menu as though she wasn't dangling a job in front of them. "Nice  _and_  lucrative," she added lightly. "Wanna know more?"

"Why should I trust you?" he asked, arms crossed.

"I'm being completely up-front with you," she replied, voice taking on a hard note as she dropped the act. "This is a hard job, dangerous, and it'll make you a few nasty enemies... not that _that's_ anything new. But I have payment,  _good_ payment, million-square easy." Suki raised an eyebrow and glanced at Sokka — for a moment, naked greed crossed over his face, but then he masked it with indifference. They'd been two months living off nothing more than tasteless protein bars; if the woman wasn't lying, then they couldn't afford to turn down this job.

"Why are you offering it to me?" he challenged her, covering his hunger with a blank expression. She shrugged.

"I need someone to do it, and fast," she sighed, "and you're here. Besides, you've had to step lightly since that show at St. Albans — oh, don't even  _try_  to pretend that wasn't you," she said, catching him before he could do just that. "Me? I couldn't care less," she said, desperation exposing the lie. "But after  _that_ , you'll be wanting to steer clear of the Alliance. Meanwhile," she explained, clicking her tongue, "that kind of force happens to be  _exactly_  what I need."

Sokka looked to her, and she nodded surreptitiously. There was a familiarity in the way the woman spoke, carried herself, explained herself — she had Companion training or something similar, and Suki had a  _lot_  of experience with reading through lying Companions. And the woman was honest about the job, it was all over her.

"All right," Sokka said, walking over to one of the tables, followed by all three women, "let's talk."

* * *

On  _Freedom_  


Waterbending, Katara knew, required at least reasonable freedom of movement, so they had filled buckets and buckets of water at the nearest washing station and hauled them back into the ship, claiming that they were stocking up for a long trip, and scattered them around the cargo bay. She had wanted to use her shuttle because she was paranoid about being seen, but after the first attempt had ended with both she and Aang tripping over her table and drenching her bed, they had made the diplomatic decision to move.

Zuko was on the lookout, lounging tensely on a chair in by the door, ostensibly to give them prior warning if anyone decided to prod them. They had closed the main cargo bay doors, but the last thing Katara wanted was for someone to look through the window and see her and Aang bending. Even though, privately, she wasn't really sure why anyone would bother.

"Okay, let's try this one," she said, and tacked an  _again_  onto it in her mind. Aang was a quick study, having already mastered all of the simpler moves on the scroll and had even begun crafting his own techniques, but she was learning much,  _much_  slower. It didn't make  _sense_  — she  _knew_  she could do this, why was it so hard when she was trying?

"You look like you firebend," Aang chirped, and she swallowed an angry retort. So, she was getting shown up by a twelve-year-old. That was all right — he was the bearer of phenomenal cosmic power all squashed into a little kid. It was only natural that he would be remarkably good at waterbending. "You are stiff."

 _And you're a brat,_  she thought, and instantly felt bad. Aang wasn't a brat, he was just precocious. She had liked that when she was teaching him English, but now it annoyed her. "All right," she said sharply, "let's walk through the moves together."

With agonizing ease, Aang walked through every move on the scroll, obviously going extra-slow so she wouldn't feel as bad (which made it worse, but at least he was trying to be nice), and then finished in a splash of water that dazzled in the light right up until it drenched Zuko. "Oops," he said, and Katara tried not to laugh at the soggy prince. "I... um, was not paying attention."

She suspected that he was lying, and didn't want to think about why.

"That's  _great_ ," Zuko started sarcastically, but she pulled the water off of him and shot him a mock glare before he could continue.

"He's still learning, go easy on him," she said, but it was clear that she and the scroll had taught Aang all he was going to learn today. Still, she thought, there was merit in it — now that he'd learned the basics, he was experimenting with water, and he seemed to enjoy it quite a bit; maybe now he wouldn't be skating everywhere. She'd rather him play with water in the cargo bay than the air scooter — it left less of a mess to clean up.

She took a deep breath. Zuko insisted that breathing and meditation were important parts of bending, and Aang had agreed with him, so they had all been doing breathing exercises every morning at 0530 sharp (which usually meant that they both had to wake her up). It helped somewhat, but she still struggled with moving the water unless she wasn't thinking about it. "Ugh," she sighed, and leaned against the wall. "Why is this so hard to do when I'm trying?" she groaned, and Aang turned to her, eyes wide.

"You think too much," he replied bluntly. "Bending is your spirit, so it is natural."

"He's right," Zuko said, looking at Aang with a calculating look. "You have to feel it. When you're reacting to a threat — " he didn't say it, but she remembered that horrible image of the blood-splattered snow, the icy hills and the bruised-black bodies strewn about " — you're feeling, not thinking. Try to feel it."

"Waterbending is the most... uh,  _sam ling soeng tung_  of the elements," Aang added, sounding like he was reciting something he'd learned long ago. "I do not know what that means in English," he said sheepishly.

"Try to explain it in another word," she told him absently, and he bit his lip.

"Um, emotion. Feel. Understand..."

"Sympathy?" she offered, and his brow furrowed.

" _Em_ pathy?" Zuko suggested, and she looked at him.

"That sounds better. It would explain... a lot, actually," she said, thinking about it. Iroh had told her that the element a person bent was related to their personality as well as their genes — thus, Toph, with her brusque and straightforward personality, was an earthbender, and Zuko, rash and smoldering, was a firebender, and Aang, flighty and eager, was an airbender. If water was associated with empathy and insight, then it made sense that she was a waterbender.

"Right!" Aang crowed. "Waterbending is the most empathy of the elements," he said, and then made a face. "That sounds wrong."

"Empathy is a noun," she said, "when it's an adjective, it's  _empathetic_. The quality of having empathy," she recited.

"Anyway," Aang went on cheerfully, "you have to feel waterbending, the monks at the temple said."

She smiled at him; it was good that he was talking about his past a little more today. He didn't often talk about the  _people_  he had known — and she never pushed him, because that obviously hurt him to think about — and she suspected that there was one person in particular he was thinking of whenever he said that the "monks" had taught him something, but he hadn't yet given them a name. Still, even if he wasn't telling them everything, he was  _talking_ , and that was enough, for now.

"How do I do that on cue?" she muttered to herself, and then sighed. "Well, I think that's all we can do with the scroll, anyway. I'll have to learn it on my own."

"So," Aang asked, tilting his head, "what do we do with all these buckets?"

* * *

At the Staggering Naga

Jet was gonna give him hell, he just  _knew_  it. But he had reason to believe that Ceri-Dian-ebe was telling the truth about this job, and probably the payment as well, although obviously she'd never just  _give_  them anything, even if they had already had an agreement — that just meant that they had to come up with a way to con her if she tried to stiff them their pay.

Conning the con-artist — he hoped Jet would appreciate the irony.

Ceri-Dian-ebe's job was simple: she wanted them to free a prisoner. The problem lay in who the jailer was: naturally, Hama Sila. He'd personally made it a point never have anything to do with her, ever, but apparently someone Ceri-Dian-ebe was close to had made that mistake and was now in the madwoman's clutches. Their recent experience with the woman would be useful, either in doing the job or in choking out an explanation for why they  _wouldn't_  do the job whenever they stopped laughing long enough to speak.

All she wanted them to do was get that person out. No frills, no secrets. In return, Ceri-Dian-ebe promised them the Lassiter, the first laser weapon, something she had stolen a while back and still had on-hand. She even said she would give them the name of a contact who had already agreed to buy it.

All for going in, guns blazing, to the most dangerous skyplex in the 'Verse and plucking someone out of Hama's clutches. Suki had asked what they were supposed to do if the person was already dead, and Ceri-Dian-ebe had replied that the job was still the same... It reminded Sokka eerily of his hunt for his sister, the single-minded determination to find her — or her body — at any and all cost.

He wondered just who this person was, that their little con-artist was so desperate to save them. She refused to say anything about them — she wouldn't even give them a  _gender!_  — but she insisted that they would know who it was when they found the person.

Of course, she didn't trust them anymore than they trusted her, and so she had every intention of joining them on this mission.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Suki murmured, arm-in-arm with him. "She can't be trusted."

"No, but I'm working on a plan," he replied in a low voice. Ty Lee suddenly grabbed his other arm, taking a leaf out of their books and using the close proximity to talk quietly.

"I don't like this at all," she said quietly, and both he and Suki stared at her for a moment. "What?" she whispered. Sokka sighed.

"Trustworthy or not, she isn't lying about this person, and I wouldn't wish Hama's brand of torture on  _anyone_ ," he said.

"What kind of torture is that?" Suki asked, and he almost tripped over his feet. Walking with two women on his arms was much cooler in theory than in practice. "I've never heard any details."

"I have," he replied darkly, "and it's bad. We'll talk to Jet, he's finished with Fanty and Mingo by now. C'mon." He shrugged Ty Lee off his arm and sauntered causally over to where Jet was sitting, alone, at the bar. Bee and Longshot had taken the money and were now stocking up on supplies, but Jet had apparently decided that he'd rather start drinking. Sokka had noticed that he was always  _off_  when he wasn't with either the pilot or his second-in-command — or else Mai, who had a way of balancing out his behavior, but she was currently either reopening her bank accounts or being arrested for multiple homicide; and so, Jet drank.

"What did Diana want?" Jet drawled, when they reached the bar. He looked at them, and then grumbled something under his breath and knocked back a shot. "Don't tell me she tried to con you, too."

"She has a job," he replied, hopping up onto a stool. "Seems legit, and she has pay."

"You sure about... any of that?"

"She showed us the payment, and told us everything about the job up-front. I think she's serious."

"She's had Companion training," Suki said, and they both turned to her. Sokka gaped. "I recognize some of the things she does, I've seen it a million times. Ty Lee can confirm that," she added, turning to Ty Lee, who was busy flirting with a strange man. "Ty Lee," she snapped, and the girl jumped.

"Huh?"

"Our white-haired friend, wouldn't you say she's had Companion training?" Suki asked, and Ty Lee nodded several times.

"Oh, definitely," she replied, "she pours drinks just like Katara and Mai do, didja see?" The guy she was flirting with looked unhappy at the sudden shift of Ty Lee's attention, but she didn't seem to care, or even notice. "We talking about the job?"

"Yeah," Suki replied, and started to say something else, but Ty Lee began talking again.

"She was definitely telling the truth about it, and whoever's trapped in that woman's skyplex," she said lightly, looking surprised as a drink appeared in front of her. "Is this from you?" she asked the man beside her, and then beamed when he nodded. "Oh,  _thank_  you!" she trilled, and then turned back to the conversation. "Whoever it is, she's super-worried. I think she's been crying a lot, too. It's probably her husband or sister or something like that, someone really, really close. She's too desperate to lie."

"You mention a woman who has a skyplex," Jet began, a strange look on his face, "tell me you're not talking about Hama."

"We are," Sokka confirmed, and Jet laughed shortly.

"Yeah, that's about seven kinds o'  _no_ ," he chortled, "she'd have to have  _damn_  good pay for that kind of - "

"She has the Lassiter," Sokka said, cutting Jet off.

"Somethin' like  _that_ , yeah," he said thoughtfully. "All right, I'll think about it."


	7. 6. the Volcano's Edge

On  _Freedom_  


Diana, it turned out,  _was_  serious about the job — serious enough to join them on his ship. He did  _not_  like the fact that she was there, and he made no effort to hide it.

"This is ridiculous," she seethed, stuffing the packing plastic into a makeshift pillow. "Can I at least have a  _blanket?_ "

"Sure," he replied cheerfully, "if someone's willing to lend you one."

After a long pause, finally, Aang walked forward, holding out his blanket. Jet scowled, but Diana beamed. "Thank you, ah," she said, looking at him expectantly.

"Aaron," Jet answered for him, and Aang nodded.

"I am pleased to meet you," he said, holding out his hand to shake. Diana smiled warmly and shook it.

"I'm Diana."

"Or Phoebe," Sokka said, and Jet grinned. Aang looked confused.

"We're going with Diana," she said bluntly, and then turned to Jet. "I can help with the planning stages, you don't have to confine me to — "

"Nope," he replied sharply, turning on his heel and marching out of the room. They had cleared most of the junk — excluding the ruined mule, for sentimental reasons, and because he thought there might be some worth left to salvage from it — from the cargo bay where Diana would be sleeping for the duration of her stay, but the whole back wall was warped and torn in places and required fixing in the worst way. He and Bee would have to do some work on it while they were en route to Hama's skyplex, but the real heavy lifting would have to wait for Toph to wake up.

His crew followed him, picking through the rubble and filing through the hole that had once been the door (it had been jammed in the chaos; Pipsqueak and Longshot had torn it out over the three days it had taken them to get to Beaumonde, and left the jagged doorway) into the dining room. "Who is she?" Aang asked, trotting up next to him like an adorable tattooed puppy.

"A bad woman," he replied, "and I want you to stay away from her."

"She didn't seem so bad," Aang said, looking behind him almost hopefully, and Jet felt queasy. Since when did twelve-year-olds have sex dri — oh, wait, he had been twelve once. Aang was right at that age where sex was curious and forbidden and even more impossibly alluring than ever before (or ever again, really), and Diana  _oozed_  sex. He'd have to warn Katara to keep a close eye on him, make sure he didn't get in over his head with the con woman. He doubted that even Aang's spectacularly good puppy-dog eyes would convince her to treat him like a human being.

"She is, trust me," Sokka said fervently, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Remember our talk the other day?" Aang nodded. "Okay, she? Is the exact type of woman I want you to stay far,  _far_  away from."

"Do I want to know what this talk was about?" he asked, and Aang shook his head.

"Um," Sokka coughed pointedly.  _"Things_."

"Yeah, keep that to yourself," he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee in a feeble attempt to quell his nicotine jitters. "So, what's the plan?"

Around the table, his crew lounged, and he didn't fail to notice the empty chair — Toph's favorite, a metal thing that she kept just the right distance away from the wall to lean back against it and prop her feet up.

"Shoot everything that moves?" Pipsqueak suggested, and he raised an eyebrow. "What? I didn't think our plan was gonna be that complicated."

* * *

On the Providence-class Destroyer  _Iago_  


Azula seethed as the two green-clad men led her into the ship. Those — those  _people_  in Parliament had sent their own man to meddle in her affairs? Death, she thought, was rather  _too_  good for them.

Providence-class ships were much smaller than the Tower-class, but they were longer and made for more complicated movement through the ship. They had been crafted as the homes of strike forces, meant to go into enemy territory, so they were made with the assumption of being boarded in mind — a necessary risk that they took by going behind enemy lines — which left them with twisting halls and confusing turns, dead ends and staircases that lead to nothing.

They were designed for the type of person who was paranoid to a fault and regularly expected the worst, but had mostly fallen into disuse after the war; Parliament only broke them out now for special, secret missions.

That meant they were using one of their best — an Operative — and, judging by the stoic men who were leading her in, she was dealing with Long Feng. Although,  _technically_ , he didn't have a name, Azula made it a point to know everything that could threaten her, and that meant knowing all of the tools the Parliament might use if (and when) they turned on her. Long Feng had been scooped up by the Alliance somewhere around the age of seven and had spent the last forty years training, learning, and occasionally stamping out pockets of rebellion in Alliance lands. The exact details of his education had stubbornly eluded her, but she knew enough to know he was dangerous.

He was also their best; Parliament was afraid of the Avatar, and they were right to fear — like everyone else, she had heard the whispers of rebellion sweeping the border planets in the wake of Zhao's crushing defeat at the Water Tribe. Right now, they were only whispers, but in a system that was still reeling from the recent civil war and whose economy still hadn't adjusted properly to peace, whispers were deadly as knives and grew like weeds.

Azula agreed with that, but found their methods asinine. The Avatar had to be stopped, yes, but so did the Outer Rim; the Avatar was little more than a catalyst, the right element introduced at the right time to cause an uproar, and removing him would do nothing about the circumstances that had led to the Water Tribe's rebellion in the first place. Parliament thought killing him would suffice, but they were wrong — and, frankly, idiotic to think so. The adage about the snake dying when the head was cut off was a blatant lie.

No, the Outer Rim was more like a cockroach: even without a head, it would continue to survive, until it finally starved to death. Killing the Avatar  _might_  solve the problem eventually — but would more likely turn him into a martyr, or, at best, hold the war off for another few years, until the spirit reincarnated and the cycle continued. Getting rid of the Avatar wasn't the answer.

Azula had a better idea in mind to bring the Outer Rim to heel, one which had lain in wait for years and was  _ideal_  for her purposes.

And she didn't need an Operative complicating matters.

* * *

In the Spirit World

"Iroh!" Aang shouted. The wind swept over the fields where they had lain him to rest, but he didn't see anyone or anything. He sighed, and continued to walk through the snow, hoping to find the old man, or at least a few answers to some lingering questions. "Iroh!" he yelled again.

"He will not come," a voice from behind him said. He whirled around - standing there, glowing blue against the snow like Roku had, was an Air Nomad woman. She folded her hands into her sleeves. "He has reincarnated. Walk with me," she said sharply, and turned, then walked right off the side of the planet. He followed her, and they landed on another world, a beautiful one near the sparkling white sun. It was surreal, to be able to walk between planets that he knew were millions of miles apart in reality, but that seemed to be just one of the many quirks of this evolving spirit world.

"I thought he might have," he said finally, "but I wanted to talk to him, so I..." he trailed off, biting his lip. The woman led him through a forest until they came to a temple, which looked vaguely Air Nomad in construction, and he thought of the religion Mai had spoken of — was this a Buddhist temple?

"This is not one of our temples," she told him, as though reading his thoughts, "but the parishioners here share many of our philosophies. You have much to learn, Avatar Aang," she said gravely, sitting cross-legged in front of an altar of a cheerful-looking fat man who reminded him vaguely of Iroh. "I am Avatar Yangchen," she explained. "What did you seek in the spirit world?"

"I wanted to know about the Avatar Spirit," he answered immediately, reverently; he'd heard stories about Yangchen. "How do I control it?"

"You must learn to unlock all of your chakras," she replied. "You cannot do that within the spirit world."

"Who do I talk to?" he asked eagerly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Hardly anyone still remembers that the Avatar even exists, let alone how to control the spirit..."

"As I said," Yangchen began, "the parishioners of this religion follow many of our philosophies. They may know the answer."

"Thank you," he replied, bowing to her. Something still tugged at his thoughts, a worry that wouldn't go away. "Avatar Yangchen..." he started uncertainly.

"Yes?" she asked, and he took a deep breath even though he didn't strictly have to breathe in the spirit world.

"What's gonna happen to the Avatar Spirit when I die?" he asked, almost as one long word. "Will it just find someone else? But the Water Tribe barely exists anymore, and the Earth Kingdom is gone... and nobody bends anymore, and..." She held up a hand to stop him.

"The Avatar Spirit is a World Spirit, Avatar Aang," she replied. "I suspect, from what the Spirit World is experiencing, when you die, it will splinter and find someone in each world."

"So there will be..." he began slowly, trying to think of how many worlds there were, "a lot of Avatars? How will they learn bending?"

"How will  _you?"_ she challenged, and he sat back hard on his tailbone. "The path opens to those who search for it," she continued, raising an eyebrow severely. "The power will be stretched thinner," she added, "but unless I am gravely mistaken, you are the last sole Avatar."

He thought about that for a long moment, then looked at her forlornly. "What do I do?" he whispered. "I'm just one person. How do I take care of an entire solar system?"

Yangchen finally smiled. "You will do what you have always done, Avatar Aang, and you will solve this problem as we have all solved it. Remember," she told him seriously, as he faded back into his body on the ship, "you are  _not_ alone."

He opened his eyes to see Katara smiling at him, a bowl of water in hand.

"Ready to practice?" she asked, and he grinned.

* * *

On  _Iago_  


Long Feng hated Princess Azula.

"I look forward to working with you," he lied smoothly. Azula was an excellent leader, a tactical genius, and downright deadly in ways that weren't supposed to even exist anymore — she was every kind of perfect on the surface, but she was dangerous to him and to the Alliance. Her lust for power was going to spell trouble for them, and soon. "I assure you that you will have my complete support. We're after the same thing here, after all," he told her, smiling, and finished the sentence in his head —  _in theory._  It was safer to assume that the princess always had something up her sleeve.

"You as well," she replied warmly. If he didn't know better, he'd think that she was the picture of kindness, openness, and grace. He thanked all the gods he'd ever heard of that he'd thought to do research on the royal family before deployment, or he might not have known to fear the princess. "To the Alliance," she said, raising her glass. "And to a prosperous future."

"To the Alliance," he repeated, raising his to toast, and waited for her to drink before he did.

"So," she began, taking a seat at the banquet table opposite him, "what is your plan to take on the Avatar?"

He bit his tongue. The last thing he wanted was to tell her, but if he didn't, he would have to answer to his superiors for shunning royalty — and, oh, how his superiors  _fawned_  over Princess Azula, called her the shining light that would bring stability to the Alliance. He valiantly tried not to sneer; Azula would bring stability, certainly, but then, so had Xiang Yu. "I hadn't settled on one yet," he answered. "Perhaps my lady had something?"

She smiled, and he tried not to sweat under her intense eyes. "I've had a few ideas," she replied, lounging in her chair, looking completely at ease. "I haven't had a chance to fully flesh them all out yet, but there are a few things, swirling about in my head," she said, waving a hand idly, her smile congenial, perfectly-formed like it had been painted onto her face.

Azula  _did_  have a plan, she just didn't want him to know about it. And he had no way of finding out unless she'd been stupid enough to tell her underlings about it — which she wasn't. He'd just have to wait for her to make her first move, but knowing Azula, that first move could easily be  _checkmate_. "Well, we should discuss some of those possibilities," he suggested, and made a show of noticing suddenly that neither of them had touched their food. "Are you not hungry, milady?"

"I ate on my ship," she replied, without taking her eyes off of him. "And that sounds like a  _capital_  idea, mister..."

"I have no name," he said immediately. "What sort of ideas did you have in mind?"

"Well, we know that he's traveling with a Firefly-class transport ship," she said, shrugging. "Why don't we start by putting a call for all captains of Firefly-class vessels to register with my ship — or yours," she added quickly, "so that we can weed out the ones who are unwilling to cooperate."

"That may not be a good idea," he replied slowly. "Fireflies are known for being smuggling ships, with... unpredictable crews."

"All the better," she said abruptly, clapping her hands like this was decided. "We can arrest anyone who refuses, and we'll even have good reason to do it. Fewer scumbags in the air."

* * *

On  _F_ _reedom_  


As if Jet wasn't already having a bad day (what the  _gui_  was the princess doing, calling all Fireflies in to be registered?), Haru made it worse when he walked up to the bridge, face pale and drawn.

"Toph is awake," was all he said.


	8. 7. Promises, Promises

On  _Freedom_  


Katara tried to hold the furious and hysterical Toph down on the bed, with Aang's help. "Toph, this isn't so bad," she cried, "it'll be okay, just let me — I can heal you, I just have to learn how."

"Yeah, and how are you gonna do that?" Toph snapped, voice breaking. "Wave your hands around and conjure up a new scroll? Or, I know, you're gonna bring some waterbenders back from the dead, that's it?" she screamed, and managed to get off the bed, only to crumple immediately to the floor at Katara's feet.

Haru had explained that he had noticed the injury was close to her spine, but hadn't been able to be sure of anything until she'd woken up, and he'd hoped for the best. Instead, they got the second-worst.

Toph was paralyzed from the waist down.

And she was taking it even worse than expected.

"What happened here?" Jet barked, coming into the Infirmary and seeing the disarray. Katara kneeled down to where Toph was sprawled out, choking on her frustrated sobs.

"The javelin clipped her spine, the fourth lumbral vertebra hit the cord," Haru said quietly, robotically, like an actor reading lines, disconnecting from the situation. "I thought... I  _hoped_  that Katara's healing had..."

"Why didn't you just let me die?" Toph cried, and Katara recoiled, tears burning in her eyes. She didn't know what to say — Toph's feet were  _important_  to her, and she used the sense of touch for  _everything_  — without being able to feel the vibrations in the ground, she couldn't see,  _and_  she'd need help to get around the ship, two things that she hated above all else. It was Aang who stepped in, face stormy, and grabbed her by the shoulders.

"This is not the end!" he shouted, matching her volume. "I would rather have Toph without legs than no Toph at all!"

"It may as well be the same," she croaked, and Aang pulled her into a tight hug. Katara wrapped her arms around both of them, trying not to cry at Toph's suffering.

"It is  _not_ ," Aang said softly. "Me and Katara both waterbend now, and we will learn healing and we will  _heal_  you, I promise."

Toph sniffed, and touched his face. "Not lying," she muttered, and then, "You  _promise?"_ she croaked, and Aang nodded firmly, a determined glint in his eyes. "I'm gonna hold you to that," she whispered, but she let him and Katara pick her up and put her back on the bed. Jet was watching, with his face schooled into blankness.

"You all right, Tophlet?" he asked affectionately, coming over and taking her hand. With the other, she rubbed her eyes violently. "This ship don't run without the best mechanic in the 'Verse, you know that."

"You need a better ship, then," she mumbled, and Jet smiled, but it didn't look at all sincere.

"Yeah, but then it wouldn't be  _Freedom_ , would it?" he asked, and Katara gave him a watery smile. "Wouldn't be home."

"Can't do my job," she muttered dejectedly, "if I can't walk."

"There's an old war saying," he said, pulling up Haru's chair and sitting on it, still holding her hand tightly, "goes like this: When you can't run, you crawl."

"I can't crawl," she snapped. "My legs ain't — "

"And when you can't crawl," he continued a little louder, cutting her off, "you find someone to carry you. You're my  _mechanic_ , Tophlet," he said quietly, "you're part of my crew and that ain't gonna change any time soon,  _dong ma?_ "

"I will carry you, too," Aang added in a small voice, taking her other hand. She screwed up her face like she was refusing to cry anymore, and failed.

* * *

Jet and Haru left Katara and Aang in the Infirmary with Toph. He closed the door quietly behind him and looked at the doctor. "Tell me the truth: do you think Katara's bending can heal her spine?" he asked seriously, and Haru sighed.

"I don't know," he replied, running a hand through his long hair, then glaring at it like it owed him something. "It healed the skin and muscle on her back pretty cleanly... if the cord is just pinched, not severed... if she knew more advanced techniques... it's possible."

"Possible," Jet muttered, and then louder, "All right." His mind was made up: with the money they'd get from fencing the Lassiter, they were going to any and all rare book stores on any planet they could find, to get a hold of waterbending scrolls, so that Katara might have the technique to heal Toph. If it had been anyone else, he would have remodeled the ship to accommodate a wheelchair, but Toph  _saw_  through her feet — now, she really  _was_  blind, and she couldn't walk, to boot.

He'd go to the end of the 'Verse if it meant never having to hear his mechanic cry again.

"All right," he said sharply, walking into the dining room where Bee, Pipsqueak, and the Duke were cleaning their weapons, "Bee, how far off from Hama's skyplex are we?"

"How is Toph?" Bee asked, and he shot her a glare.

"That ain't what I asked you," he said, and she glanced away, understanding on her face. Bee read him entirely too well.

"About an hour," she replied, "give or take a few, dependin' on how nasty her defense is and how much dodgin' we have to do."

"Good," he said, and then turned to Haru, who had followed him through the ship. "Doc, you're gonna stay behind, but keep the Infirmary stocked. Might want to move Toph to the couch outside — " he hesitated; she wouldn't be able to get into her bunk, they'd have to figure out something to do about that " — so the bed's clear, just in case. Bee, you and me are goin' in first, gonna try bargainin' with Hama, but let's not expect things to be pretty. Have Longshot, Pipsqueak, and the Duke on-hand, we're probably gonna need 'em bail us out."

"That's a bit dangerous, sir," Bee replied, loading a shotgun. "You sure we don't just want to burst in there?"

"Not if we don't have to," he answered. "Duke, get the con woman up here, she needs to come with us. Pipsqueak," he said, as the Duke bolted off to get Diana, "we still have the pieces of the mule, right?"

"Right. It don't run anymore, though."

"Does it have wheels?"

"Yes..." Pipsqueak replied, confused. "They're busted up somethin' fierce, but they still turn."

"Good," he said, "I'll prep that before I go, and you and the Duke'll have instructions to use that if it gets hairy. Here," he continued, holding out a pair of communicators, "I'm on line 2, you're on line 3, Haru's on line 1." Haru looked floored to be included, but Jet didn't really get why — he'd made it pretty clear that he didn't have any intention of going back to Persephone, which meant that he was part of the crew for now, and part of the job.

"We're planning?" Diana asked, sauntering into the dining room, looking only slightly worse for having slept on a metal floor for three nights.

"Yeah, you're going in first with me and Bee," he replied, loading a magazine with hollow-point rounds. "We're gonna see about bargaining with Hama."

"I'm going with you," someone said suddenly, and they turned. Katara was standing in the doorway, looking determined. "I'm a better negotiator than any of you, anyway," she added.

He watched her carefully for a long moment — why did  _she_  want to go? — and then nodded. "Fine, get your princely boyfriend in here, we could use some fire, too. Bee, that puts you in charge of the home team, since she's volunteered to be the negotiator."

"Yes, sir," Bee replied, without looking up from her weapons.

"Why does she want to come?" Pipsqueak asked, and Jet shrugged.

"I don't know. Where was I?"

"You were busy telling me that you're going to be a  _hóuzi de pìgu_ and try to bargain with Hama," Diana explained, and he glared at her.

"Yeah, there," he deadpanned. "We're gonna see if we can convince her to hand over this friend o' yours."

"Hama doesn't negotiate," Diana said, like he didn't already know.

"Yeah, well, we just got paid, and everybody answers to the sound o' shiny," he growled, filling his last magazine and loading his pistols. "If she don't respond to the money, 'Squeaks and I got a code for "come bail my ass out" so we'll just use that and the second team'll come in, guns blazin'."

"You have to go in unarmed," Diana told him, slamming her palm on the table. He scowled at her.

"No,  _really?_  You think this is the first negotiation we've run? We — "

"Yes," she snapped, cutting him off, "I  _do_  think this is your first negotiation."

"It is," Bee told her, voice icy, "but we also have a lot of experience with Hama's sort, so you can hop off that high horse you've got crammed up your ass and leave the planning to the people you hired to do it."

"And if I don't?" Diana asked archly, raising one perfect white eyebrow. "You'll do what, little girl?"

Bee gave her a look that could make a Reaver turn tail and run. "I'm going to be real nice right now," she began, "and let the  _little girl_  comment slide. Now, let's just say that if you don't listen to what I have to say, you'll find out how it feels to have a  _real_  high horse shoved up your ass,  _dong ma?_ "

"And she won't use any lube, either," the Duke muttered, peering through the barrels of one of his shotguns. Jet snorted.

"We 'bout ready?" he asked, as Katara returned with Zuko.

"Yes," Zuko said, eyes ablaze, and Jet glanced around the room.

"Prince Hotman here is gonna stay on the ship," he declared, and Zuko's face shifted down, but Jet ignored it. "Gonna need some  _real_  firepower when —  _if_ things get hairy. Y'all keep an eye on the Avatar, don't let Hama get even the faintest whiff he's onboard,  _dong le ma?_ "

"Do you think I'm stupid?" Zuko replied, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Katara laid a hand on Zuko's arm and said something to him quickly, voice too low for Jet to make out. He glared harshly at Jet for another long moment, and then nodded to Katara and stalked out of the room. "You're a saint for puttin' up with him," he grumbled, peering through the sights of his rifle at the Duke and miming shooting him, just for the hell of it. It was Bee who replied.

"He's not that bad, 'cept when you're being an ass to him," she said.

"I'm not an  _ass_ ," he replied, affronted.

His whole crew laughed at him.

* * *

On the Tower-class ship  _Desdemona_  


Azula moved through an advanced kata in one of her rooms — she had specifically designed this one so that it was nearly soundproof, had several locks from the inside (and outside), and contained  _nothing_  flammable, so that she could practice in absolute peace.

It was that  _idiot_  Operative, getting mixed up in her business and throwing her plans off —  _again._

She was getting quite sick of tiptoeing sweetly around the Parliament's man, and the Parliament in general; she had  _plans_ , big ones, the sort of plans that changed the shape of the 'Verse and put her at the forefront of a new regime, but those plans required the government get  _out_ of her way. The only reason she hadn't moved on them yet was the Avatar himself — Azula knew her history, and the folly of a two-front war. She didn't know for certain what sort of power he commanded, although she had personally interviewed several of the few survivors of Zhao's short-lived siege of the Water Tribe, and they all seemed to agree on one thing: there were  _two_ powers at work, and both were _unimaginably_  dangerous.

One man spoke of a woman wreathed in red — the now-infamous Demon of the Water Tribe — killing men with a flick of her wrist and cutting rows of soldiers into pieces with razor-sharp shards of ice; another spoke of a brilliant glow bringing a cyclone up from the ground and laying waste to an army ten-thousand strong. The Avatar and the water witch that Zhao had been hunting before Uncle's untimely disappearance... the one he had gone on and on about, this one woman he'd been chasing for over fifteen years, a waterbender from St. Albans who had fled to Sihnon and become a Companion.

Azula smirked; it was almost enough to make her believe in fate.

There were also mentions of men with fire in their hands — Uncle and Zuzu, obviously; wherever that waterbender went, her brother would follow, like a loyal puppy. At the capital, he had been  _infatuated_  with her, sneaking out at odd hours to meet her, getting irrationally angry whenever Azula called her what she  _was_  — a whore. Perhaps a classically trained one, but a whore nonetheless.

She finished the kata and scowled — her hair had come lose in the movements. She heaved a theatrical sigh for the benefit of no one, fixed her hair calmly, and started over again, because perfection was required at every level.

Her spies among the Operative's men had given her information that currently worried her more than the witch, though: a series of porcelain armlets that he wore that were all of the same make but different shapes. The evidence was thin, but when coupled with everything else she knew about Long Feng (and she knew a  _lot_ , probably more than even  _he_  did), she felt confident in her conclusion: the Alliance had sent a master Earthbender — maybe the last one in _existence_  — to hunt down the Avatar.

She didn't know if it was gloriously intelligent or monstrously stupid.

It made sense, now that she was getting a clearer picture of Long Feng's history in her mind: he had shown a talent for earthbending at a young age (probably on Ariel or Shadow; the planets were known for being descended from the Earth Kingdom) and the Alliance had scooped him up, like they did all children who showed bending talent. Most were imprisoned for study or killed outright, but Long Feng was  _crafty_  in a way that most people weren't — she wouldn't have been surprised if he, even at a very young age, had been able to talk his way out of prison or execution, by convincing the Alliance that he was more useful to them alive than dead.

That explained why they were so conservative with their best Operative; the last thing the Alliance needed was for their secret to get out. Officially, bending was a long-dead art and no benders had been born in over a thousand years — if the people knew that their government had been rounding up and killing children as young as four and five, and had been doing it for  _centuries._.. They would be effectively destroyed from within.

"Milady?" a voice at her door said, and she mimed shooting lightning at it in irritation. Instead of  _actually_  blasting the door to pieces, she took a deep breath.

"Yes?" she asked sweetly, smoothing her meticulous clothing and stepping calmly out of the room. It was the navigator, Quinn, and she wouldn't look at her.

"The Operative is here," Quinn said, "along with a Firefly, he seems to think you should see it personally."

"Oh?" she replied, raising an eyebrow and walking through the halls, Quinn following her loyally. "Does it have signs of bending having been performed lately?"

"Not to my knowledge, milady," Quinn murmured, and Azula heaved a sigh, turning on her.

"I don't make a habit of shooting messengers, Quinn," she said, glaring at her. "Stop acting like I'm going to kill you over this. You  _shouldn't_  fear me... unless there's something I don't know about you?"

"Of course not, milady," she said quickly, "I just... I know how the lady dislikes the Operative."

"Well, that's true," Azula replied coldly. "He's a meddlesome fool."

"He...  _is_  an Operative," Quinn said hesitantly, "and I don't believe that the Alliance employs fools for such jobs."

"On the contrary, Quinn, only a fool would do such a job," she countered, and when Quinn looked confused, she continued. "Operatives are meant for one purpose: to keep secrets. They are  _not_  to know what those secrets are. Do you understand how much willful ignorance and blind loyalty that requires?" she scoffed, and waved a hand. "And on top of this, our  _friend_ ," she said the word like it was covered in poison, "already knew what we were dealing with. Not only was he a fool to become an Operative in the first place, but he isn't even doing his job properly. I must say," she sighed, "he just  _hasn't_ measured up to his reputation."

"I'm wary of him, milady," Quinn gushed, biting her lip with fear at the sudden outburst, as though Azula would strike her down for speaking out of turn — which was a bit disheartening; that was something she would only do if she thought Quinn was being insubordinate. "I worry that there is more to him than meets the eye."

"Quinn," she replied warmly, "there  _always_  is. Do you know what the trick is?" she asked, and then continued without giving the other woman a chance to respond. "You must always ensure that they know less about you than you do them," she explained. "Like the Operative, I have also done my research; unlike the Operative, I'm a more skilled researcher. Don't worry, Quinn," she added, congenial and venomous, "I have him completely under my control.

" _I_  will capture the Avatar," she continued softly, composing herself before going into the meeting room where Long Feng waited. "He is merely an obstacle, one I will take care of when the time is right."

* * *

Hama Sila's Skyplex, orbiting the planet Ezra

Katara led the way into Hama's skyplex, since she was playing lead negotiator. She had been fully prepared to stay on the ship with Aang and Toph, but she remembered those scrolls that Bee had seen when they were picking up the train job, and although Sokka insisted that this was the stupidest thing she'd ever done, she had to take the chance that they might be about waterbending, or any bending,  _something_  useful. The odds weren't in her favor, but she just couldn't get the image of Toph, sprawled out at her feet and sobbing, out of her mind's eye.

If there was a chance, she had to risk it, and besides, she  _was_  a better negotiator than Jet.

The woman they called Diana walked next to her, scowling, while Jet walked behind them, playing the part of dutiful servant to the Companion who had shown up. This whole gamble was fragile, and she was glad to know that the others were waiting in the wings to save them when it would all inevitably go wrong.

"Lady Hama Sila," one of the men said, opening the door, "the Companion, Lady Katara Nerrevik. She is here about... Madame Malina."

The woman inside the room hardly looked as dangerous as Sokka and Bee had sworn she was — in fact, she looked downright  _friendly._

"Lady Katara, and Captain Reynolds," she replied, bowing her head slightly and smiling with a mouthful of black teeth, "come in, come in. It's good to see you again, Jonathan," she said warmly, and Jet stiffened. "And who is this — ?"

"This is Diana, a friend of Madame Malina's," she explained. "Diana would like to see the lady, if she is here."

"Oh, she's here," Hama replied, "and still kicking, if you care. She wronged me," she said matter-of-factly, "and no, she can't see her daughter."

Katara glanced at Diana — the woman they were springing was her  _mother?_  "Her daughter?" she repeated dumbly, and Diana scowled.

"Yes, I recognize the hair," Hama answered, pointing to Diana's head and smiling in way that set Katara on-edge. "Not many people under the age of seventy with hair that color. How's it a pretty young thing like you ended up with a head full o' white hair, eh?"

Diana glowered. "A botched dye job," she snapped, and Hama barked out a laugh.

"I'll let you see her if, if you like," she offered, like it was a huge favor. "Crow, open the window for our guests," she said, and they turned as the large, tattooed man walked over to a wall and pulled on a section of it, revealing a window, or a two-way mirror. On the other side of it was a woman with startlingly white hair sprinkled with blood, and she was chained to the ceiling by her wrists. She was crying.

Katara felt sick; this was a nightmare.

"We have payment," she said, putting her training to use in keeping her face completely free of emotion. "Five thousand credits."

Hama appeared to think about that, and then grinned. "Just because I like your crew so much, I'll be nice. That'll get you... half, that seem fair?" she suggested. "You get first pick, too. Top, bottom, left, or right?"

"No deal," Jet said, before Katara could speak. She shot him an incredulous glare — what, did he actually think she was considering it? — but he just raised an eyebrow, and she caught on — that was his and Pipsqueak's code. The sirens went off and after a long, tense minute where they all stood and waited for something to happen, Hama watching them with a calculating, condescending look, a loud crash sounded from the distance as  _Freedom_  violently pulled in to land at the skyplex.

"You really thought to play me? How ungrateful. After all I've done for you," she huffed indignantly, mockingly, and raised her hands into a strange... a  _familiar_  form. Katara felt the pull on her blood, and she heard her companions shout, and she reacted — felt it, the way that Aang and Zuko had talked about, the movement and the  _pulse_  and the rush of pressure against the vessels. She raised her hands into the same form,  _pulling_  on Crow's blood and Hama's blood, and the woman gasped at her before she burst into laughter. "Oh, now  _that's_  rich! You bring your very own bloodbender into my den. That's a new one, I'll admit."

Jet hit the ground just behind her, gasping and clutching his sides. "What the  _hell_  was that?" he hissed, and she stared at Hama. That was the special torture she used, that had done —  _that_  — to Diana's mother, that had made her name known through this quadrant as someone not to cross. She  _tortured_ people with the same technique that Katara had used to stop the Alliance on St. Albans.

"So, the Companion is a waterbender," Hama crowed, "and a powerful one, at that. We can deal," she said, grinning, "an even trade. You get the Madam Malina back if I get to keep the little bloodbender — just to teach, mind," she added innocently, but her eyes glittered with something that Katara didn't want to name. "I'm just  _dying_  to train another powerful bender."

"No deal," Jet replied sharply, standing up, and Hama twisted her hands again, but then Katara followed her movements and she seized up for a second, then shot her a vicious glare.

"You can't bend my blood, little girl, no more than I can yours," she said coldly, and then swept her hand over a potted plant on her desk. Abruptly, it turned to a brown husk, and Hama was attacking her with shards of ice. Katara stepped backwards, gasping, and caught the ice, forming it into her own tide that she threw back at the old woman.

It was clear, though, that Hama was the superior bender — perhaps Katara had the  _power_  to beat her, but she lacked the training. "You're an amateur," Hama said, pinning her to the wall with knives of ice. "I, on the other hand..."

How? Katara wondered. How had she found training? It had to be proof that the scrolls were about waterbending — but now she was in over her head.

Jet tackled Hama then, and Diana hit Crow full across the face with the dead potted plant before shattering the two-way mirror with the heavy lamp on Hama's desk and diving through to free her mother. Katara pulled the water from the ice-sickles, splitting it into two and freezing Crow to the wall with one half, then followed Diana.

"Yue," the woman gasped, "Yue, you came for me — you —  _no_  — "

Katara froze.

 _Yue_. That was the name of Chief Arnook's  _daughter_  — she tried to remember what had happened to her and her mother. Father had told her once, but it had happened before she could remember, Arnook had — something, he had done something bad, and his wife had left him and taken their daughter with her, just fled the planet.

Yue was Diana, Pheobe, Ceridwen — the last Water Tribe princess descended from the ancient moon goddess Yue herself, a line that went back to the Age of Bending.

"Ssh, mother," Yue breathed, easing her into her arms, "I'm here. I brought a healer," she said, and shot Katara a watery glare, daring her to comment on their shared heritage. She rushed over and began to heal the woman with Hama's water. It didn't help overmuch, but it did seem to ease her pain.

"There's a doctor on the ship," she said, and the woman smiled.

"Kya," she muttered, "I never thought I would..." Her eyes fluttered closed, but Katara had a finger on her pulse; her heart was still beating, if weakly.

"She's alive," Katara said fervently, "we can get her to — " She cried out as a wave of water hit her in the chest and she hit the far wall, blacking out.


	9. 8. Desperate Times

On  _Freedom_  


Bee held onto Longshot's shoulder as they flew into the skyplex, dodging Hama's men shooting at them as they came in. The shuttle had gone through with little trouble, but the skyplex wasn't known for accepting visitors too kindly, and they had a standing order to attack any ship that came with less-than-diplomatic reasons. Hama's pilots were some of the best, but they couldn't beat her Longshot.

Sokka stood on the other side of him, and was making a genuinely touching effort to avoid back-spaceship driving, but every now and then, an exclamation of  _oh dear God no!_  would come from his direction.

Longshot pulled up the ship and came to a rough, loud landing against the docking station of the skyplex, a heavy-metal-on-metal shriek reverberating through the ship and making her  _teeth_  itch. She patted him on the shoulder. "All right," she barked, "let's get a move on. Sokka, you're in charge of the home team, make sure no one gets into the cargo bay,  _dong ma?_ "

"Right," he replied, and trotted behind him while she fixed her vest and resisted the urge to fix Longshot's, even though it was on right. They joined up with Pipsqueak, the Duke, Suki, Ty Lee, and Zuko in the cargo bay, all standing around the ruined mule. She nodded to Zuko, who lit the fuse on the charges they'd set up on the mule, and then to the Duke, who opened the cargo bay, as everyone who wasn't the prince bolted for cargo to hide behind.

Zuko performed a strange martial arts move and fired a concussive blast from his fist that hit the mule and sent it careening into the chaos of Hama's defenses. It exploded in the middle of the guards —  _perfect,_  she thought.

"Zuko, Suki, Ty Lee," she barked, already shouldering her weapons and walking forward, "you answer to Sokka. Hold the cargo bay."

They marched into the fray, Bee at the lead, followed closely by her comrades, but were surprised when they found Jet and Diana rushing toward them, the half-dead woman Hama had been torturing when they'd taken on the train job held limp between them — and no Katara. Bee took over from Jet as he snatched the bag of his weapons from Pipsqueak.

"Come on," she snapped to Diana, helping her carry the woman back into the ship. Sokka started when they limped into the cargo bay. "Katara's still back there, someone take my place!" she called, and she caught sight of Zuko flying past her. Together, she and Diana carried the woman to the Infirmary — Toph was laying on the couch and didn't speak to them as they passed — and Haru and Aang both helped them pull the woman up onto the bed.

"Katara tried to heal her, I think it helped," Diana gasped. "She said she was still alive."

Haru checked the woman's pulse. "She is, but in bad shape — get me the morphine and sutures, I'll do what I can. What's your blood type?" he asked, and Diana gaped at him.  _"Hurry,"_  he snapped, "her pulse is falling. She needs a transfusion."

"I — uh," Diana started, and Bee almost dropped the vials of morphine in shock — there was something  _real_  on Diana's face, genuine fear and horror. "It's B positive, my blood type, I'm — I'm B positive, but I don't know what — "

"I'm O-neg," Bee offered, and Haru pointed at the cabinets while he prepared the tray of surgical tools.

"Top shelf, get all of that, we'll need it," he barked.

"What can I do?" Aang asked, and Haru motioned to Diana.

"Get her out of here. She doesn't need to be here for this."

* * *

When Katara opened her eyes, she was staring into Hama's, and there were metal cuffs binding her wrists together. They were in the same torture room as before — the window was still shattered from Yue's bursting through it — and she guessed that it had only been a minute or so. She didn't see Yue, but the gunfire in the distance said it was just a matter of time before the others reached her.

"How did you learn waterbending?" she gasped, and Hama hauled her to her feet, grinning like a cat. She looked around surreptitiously; there was blood on the floor, but there weren't any bodies. Good, Yue had gotten her mother out.

"Scrolls," she replied shortly, holding her shoulder in a vice-like grip that made her knees weak. "Lots and lots of scrolls. Water Tribe used to have them, but now they're mine. You'd like them, wouldn't you? That's why you came," she said, dragging her into another room. She was still too addled to fight back, but her head was clearing fast, the icy question settled hard in her gut — how could she get out of this?

"How did you — " she started, fighting against the restraints on her wrists as Hama hooked them up to the ceiling like Yue's mother had been. Hadn't the old woman said she wanted to  _teach_  her?

"Get them?" Hama finished for her, and smiled. "Yue is my granddaughter, don't you know?" she asked, and laughed. "Malina is my daughter. They pretend that I'm dead, that I died forty years ago when the Fire Nation captured me for being a bender, same Fire Nation that planned to do the same thing to you they did to me, so you thank your lucky stars that you had a mother to  _die_  for you." There was something her tone, an utmost loathing that startled Katara.

"What...?" she tried to ask, although she really thought she'd rather not know. Her ribs ached and scraped against her lungs in a way that worried her, and her arms ached already. She tried to get a foothold, but she was strung up too high. Hama laughed.

"Oh, I have all sorts of access to the library on St. Albans. I went... well, above and beyond, let's say," she she said, waving a hand. "Once I realized there's water in everything — if you know where to look for it. It started with leaves and then vines and then flies and then... the guards never saw me coming. I broke out of prison same way you killed all those people — " She flinched, but if Hama noticed, she gave no indication, too caught up in her own tale " — and I went back home, but they didn't  _want_  me there. I was  _tainted._  Like you," she explained cheerfully. "That scroll that your mother had? One of her ancestors stole it from the set I took right out of the library. I'm surprised they hadn't dumped it all into the ocean, superstitious fools," she said coldly. "I took 'em all and learned all they could teach me, and since then, I've been gettin' what's  _mine._  You understand, don't you?" she asked, eyes wide and mad and haunted. "Malina was gonna give me to the Alliance — to the  _Fire Nation_  — I had to stop her. And then you waltz in here with my own little granddaughter and think to stop me? Oh, the hilarity never ceases."

Katara felt like she was about to be sick. She knew Jet wouldn't leave her in Hama's clutches — but that didn't mean they could save her: Hama's brand of teaching, she was seeing now, was to do to Katara what the Fire Nation had done to her. First her father, and now Hama, her own people turned mad with bloodlust, so desperate for vengeance that they sacrificed their souls to the gods of revenge.

She thought of Aang, and she prayed that he stayed safe, that he get out without being seen by any of Hama's security cameras or guards. The 'Verse needed him, more than even  _she_  had thought.

"You're mad," she whispered, and Hama laughed again, a high sort of cackle.

"I am who the Alliance made me, little bloodbender, and so are you."

* * *

Jet snarled as he ran into Pipsqueak, wrenching his weapons from the bag that the mercenary was carrying. Diana passed him, and Bee rushed forward to help her; together, they carried the unconscious woman back to the ship. Pipsqueak looked around. "Where's Katara?" he asked, and Jet gave him one of his glares.

"We're going back for her," he said unnecessarily. "Duke, go get the firebender, we'll need — well, never mind then," he said, as Zuko ran in, apparently having been told the news by Bee. Jet ducked behind the wall as shots came in his direction, and nodded at Pipsqueak, who threw a grenade into the hallway before he and the Duke ducked behind the wall on the other side of the door as it exploded. "Pipsqueak, I want you and the Duke holding this hallway. Hotman, you're with me and Longshot, let's move!"

Longshot and Zuko followed him into the rubble, and they jumped through the rubble that had fallen in the last grenade.

"Longshot," he said quietly, ducking into a hallway while Zuko sent a blast of fire into the people coming at them. Their screams punctuated the sirens' wailing. "I want you to get your sniper rifle ready."

His pilot nodded — it was the reason behind the nickname that he had taken on before joining up with the  _Freedom,_  in some distant past that even Bee probably didn't know: he could shoot the wings off a fly's back at a hundred paces. But he was a slow shot — trained sniper, not the sort to get into a melee — and Jet didn't often have the need for that sort of accuracy, so he spent most of his time manning the ship. But on the rare occasion that he needed a difficult shot to be pulled off  _perfect_  — he was glad that he had the pilot he did.

"You want me to take out the old lady?" Longshot asked, and Jet nodded. "Get me a clear look at her, and I'll do it."

"How do we do that?" Zuko asked, as they moved to the next intersection.

Jet unloaded his clip into the hallway, and smiled. "Thanks for volunteering," he said, and thought,  _ah, screw it_  before pulling out a cigarette and indicating pointedly to Zuko, who stared at him blankly for a moment before narrowing his eyes.

"I  _am not_  lighting that for you," he said coldly, and Jet rolled his eyes, but pulled out his matchbook all the same. Bee would kill him for it — she had already given him an earful for even taking the cigarettes with him — but he didn't especially care. Tense situations required  _something_  to ease the tension, and he rather thought that they all preferred he smoke than kill them all in a nicotine-deprived rage.

"What's the good in bein' able to make fire in your hand if you won't even give me a light?" he growled, and took off at a run down the hallway, chased by Pipsqueak, Zuko, and the Duke, all grumbling a series of curses as to his character. He barreled straight into the big guy with the tattoos, and managed to get off a couple of  _wildly_  inaccurate shots before the man's tree trunk of an arm sent him flying into the wall. Luckily, Longshot was right behind him, a single shot to the head, right between the eyes. "Thanks," he moaned weakly, glaring at the just-lit cigarette that was laying on the ground,  _mocking_  him. "Gorammit," he growled, and pulled out another.

" _Should you really be doing that right now?_ " Zuko hissed through clenched teeth, as Longshot shouldered his sniper rifle and hitting another guard about fifty feet down the hall.

"You weren't in the war, so I'll forgive you for not knowing that, son," he drawled, feeling much, much better as the nicotine hit his system. "Now is the only proper time  _for_  smoking. You know why? Two reasons," he said, answering his own question and kicking in the door to Hama's room. "One, it calms the nerves," he started, looking around. "Where are they?" he asked, prodding at the broken two-way mirror with his rifle.

"What's the second one?" the Duke asked, following him into the room, confused.

"Huh?" he said absently, and then remembered. "Oh, the second reason is 'cause it looks damn awesome. Where the hell  _are_  they?"

Longshot walked cautiously into the torture room, and then immediately froze, the gun falling from his hands — there she was. He shouldered his weapon hastily, but then his body seized up again — along with Pipsqueak, Zuko, and the Duke — as Hama walked in, her hands held out in that spindly form.

"I'm impressed," Hama whispered. "Your loyalty is just  _inspiring."_

* * *

The moment Hama left, Katara went to work on her bonds, quickly realizing that she was more or less helpless, unless she could break the lock, and she couldn't break the lock with empty hands and good intentions. But if she had water... if she could freeze the lock...

 _There's water in everything if you know where to look for it_.

She'd done it before, broken through the skin. It had been an accident then, but now...  _desperate times_ , she thought. Desperate measures.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, acutely aware of every tiny sound and shift in the air around her, every tiny high-strung warning, and moved her hands together like she had the last time she was in a prison, feeling the blood in her veins. She moved with it through her arm and into her wrist and into her hand, feeling for something under her palm, and then jerked with her fingers. Wincing, she drained some of the blood — as much as she could; although it was little blood, she still felt drained — and split it between each hand, carefully holding it in place and tilting her hand palm-up.

With her other hand, she swirled the blood around in her palm and let it fall into the lock, where she froze it solid and jerked it sharply, the brittle metal cracking with the ice, and she shook herself free, falling to the ground, gasping.

She stood up on shaky legs, vaguely nauseous, but didn't have time to recover — she'd heard Jet talking right before Hama had left, which meant her friends were out there probably being tortured right now and she had to save them. She staggered into the next room and saw Longshot first, on his knees as Hama held him down, but it was clearly taking a toll on her to keep all of them in one place.

Katara didn't even need to bend: all she had to do was disrupt  _Hama's_  bending, distract her and let the pressure up off the others, so she took a leaf out of Sokka's book and tackled her. Almost immediately, Longshot rolled over, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jet, and beyond him, some others were sprawled on the floor.

She fell against the wall as Hama lashed out with water she'd pulled from her own sweat — Katara felt it slash her across the stomach, intended to kill, but she'd moved fast enough so that it didn't cut so deep. It still stung, and she held a hand over her stomach, gasping, and healed the slash as quickly as she could.

Hama kept moving, keeping the wall between herself and Jet, so that she was only having to face Longshot and Katara — and Longshot was still reeling, along with everyone in the other room, which meant that, realistically, it was just Katara. For a long moment, they circled each other uncertainly, waiting for someone else to make the first move, and then Hama lunged for her, twisting her hands cruelly — Katara's entire body seized up as Hama strove to control her, to kill her with her own body, and for a horrible moment she couldn't fight back and her vision went black and the ground came up to hit her knees.

The jolting shock of the cold metal snapped her back into the world and control, her pounding heartbeat drowning any outside sound into the white noise of sudden re-control; for a half of a second, all she could hear was her own pulse and her own breath, and then everything cleared and focused onto Longshot's sniper rifle, dropped on the floor a foot from his shaking hands.

Before she was even fully aware of herself or her surroundings, before Hama could react or probably even realize that Katara had broken free, before she could hesitate, the rifle was in her hands and she was standing, turning, using momentum and desperation to drive the barrel point-first and angled upwards into Hama's gut and pull the trigger.

They both froze immediately; for a breath and a half ( _a shaky inhale, an aborted exhale, silence_ ) Katara stayed still, blinking away the overwhelming white haze left over from the moment of blackness. In the sudden vaccuum of action, the realization of what she had just done struck her like a knife to the back, and she staggered backwards, the rifle slipping from her fingers and clattering to the floor with a loud, inorganic rattle, followed immediately by the wet, dense _thud_  of body hitting metal.

A hand caught her by the arm, and she turned suddenly to see Longshot trying to stand, his rifle back in one hand. She helped him the rest of the way up, close enough to hear him say, "You did what you had to do."

Close enough for her to whisper, "What's  _that_  worth?" and be sure that no one would hear. He looked at her with something strange knotted up in his face, but didn't say anything else.

"Come on," Jet said thickly, firmly, and she shook the taste of iron and salt out of her mouth, controlling her features once more.

"Hama said she had waterbending scrolls," Katara said, walking confidently into the other room and helping Zuko stand. "We need to find those. For Aang — and Toph."

"Bee said they were on the bookshelf, right?" Pipsqueak replied, helping the Duke to his feet; his size had allowed him to recover somewhat faster than the others, while the Duke's wiry build had been hit the hardest by Hama's bloodbending. "They should — there," he said bluntly, and she turned to see what he was looking at: on the top shelf, neatly organized, were the series of ancient scrolls Bee had spoken of.

"Bag 'em," Jet barked, glaring at an unsmoked cigarette that was laying on the ground where he'd fallen. "And do it double-time, we've gotta get back to the ship 'fore they take off without us."

"Somehow, I doubt they'll do that," Longshot drawled sardonically, taking a bag from Pipsqueak and stuffing the scrolls into it.

"Be careful with those!" she cried, and winced as Longshot shot something behind her — a guard had come in. The man dropped, clutching his knee in agony. "I can — I'll heal you," she told the guard, twisting at the carnage, but four voices replied to her.

 _"No!"_  Jet, Zuko, the Duke, and Pipsqueak all shouted. "We've gotta get moving," Jet continued. "Hurry!"

"These are old," Pipsqueak snapped back at him. "They're delicate."

"Do you really need all of 'em?" Jet growled, and she shot him a glare. She was feeling better now, or at least less drained, and she knew Zuko was too, but his arm stayed tight around her, like he was scared of losing her. "Fine, whatever," he muttered, leaning out the doorway and looking both ways. "We're clear, let's go."

Pipsqueak grabbed the last few scrolls off the shelf and Longshot shouldered the bag, and together, they all raced from the skyplex.

* * *

On  _Freedom_  


"I'm sorry," Haru said quietly, and Diana turned away. "She'd lost too much blood, for too long..."

Suki had never expected to feel sorry for the smug, white-haired woman who had tried to kill Sokka and Jet, but the way she stared into the Infirmary with cold eyes reminded her horribly of all the times during the war she'd had to break bad news — she recognized that look, she'd seen it on the families of each of her warriors, one by one. It was that  _I am not going to cry in front of you_  look that screamed in pain but refused to make a sound.

Suki was altogether  _too_  well acquainted with death, but she thought it was one of those things that always cut deeper than expected.

"Where d'you want us to go?" Jet asked, arms crossed. He'd carried Toph into the spare room that Suki had been in earlier — she'd elected to trade rooms with Toph until such a time as Toph could get back into her own bunk. With that one exception, and Longshot at the helm getting them away from Ezra, the whole crew was gathered outside the Infirmary. "We have to go back to Beaumonde to pick up Mai and your things, but beyond that, we can go wherever you need us to."

"St. Albans," Diana replied, voice distant. "She had — she wanted to go back there."

"You're from the Water Tribe?" Sokka asked, and Katara nudged him, but Diana turned.

"Originally," she said, with weak defiance. "My mother was married to Chief Arnook."

Sokka looked surprised, and he mouthed something, but Suki couldn't tell what. She stared at Diana curiously — now that she knew, she could see that the woman looked vaguely similar to Sokka and Katara in coloration and shape.

"It's winter there," Katara said, "we just left — the permafrost..."

"Then we'll do a sea burial," Sokka interjected, looking to Diana for confirmation. "The tribe will perform it properly," he added, and Diana nodded.

"Fine. You killed her?" Diana asked, and for the first time, Suki saw tears in her eyes.

"Yes," Katara replied hollowly, and Diana nodded once, then walked away. Katara followed her, but no one else made a move.

* * *

"I don't want to hear it," Diana said, staring sight-unseeing at the engine. It was the only place she could think of that would be empty, where she could be alone with her past and her present and her lack of a future.

"You don't even know what I'm going to say," the Companion, the waterbender, the healer who wasn't good enough the  _one_  time it really mattered, said from the doorway, stepping lightly into the room, quiet as a whisper and loud as a jet engine. Her world, already barely large enough to breathe in, shrank a little further with each step Katara took towards her.

"I don't care," she replied tensely. "I don't want to hear anything you have to say."

For a while, the silence hung in the air around her, heavy and suffocating, until Katara spoke again. "I lost my mother too," she started, and Diana laughed harshly.

"You were a  _child,"_  she snapped. "It isn't the same. Do you even remember her?" It was supposed to be ice, but it came out water.

"Yes," Katara answered warmly, stepping forward and touching her shoulder. She stiffened convulsively and stalked over to the other side of the engine to shut the other woman out. "I know you're hurting, I know how you feel. You're not alone."

"You know  _nothing,"_  she hissed, countering Katara's warmth with venom. "You've never been alone in your  _life,_  you don't even know enough to know you're wrong. You've  _always_  had people on your side, people who  _care_  about you. I only had  _one_  person and she's — " she broke off her words before they broke on their own. "Your enemies are everyone's enemies," she spat with what remained of her pride and anger. "No one hates you for who you are."

Katara hesitated for a half-step too long, before saying, almost too quiet to hear, "No one  _knows_  who you are."

When Diana refused to say anything else, she sighed heavily like she was releasing more than breath. The silence ground an emotion Diana couldn't name into and under her skin.

(Yue could name it, if she would let her, but she was not Yue to anyone but her mother.)

After a moment, Katara sighed again, the retreating  _click_  of heels against metal; there was something masochistically triumphant in that sound, the music her life moved to: the sound of successfully keeping people locked outside her walls. It was the only song she knew.

It was getting old.


	10. 9. Dance

 On _Freedom_

Katara pulled out one of the scrolls that night, but found that, although there were some archaic drawings, most of it was in an unfamiliar script ― a more advanced scroll meant for an older reader, thus: fewer pictures. "Aang," she whispered, and rushed through the ship until she reached the passenger dorms, then barged into his room, agitated. He sat up and rubbed his eyes confusedly.

"What is wrong?" he asked, and she blushed. She shouldn't have been so _eager_ to get started, but Toph was curled up in the dorm next to Aang's and she was so sad, and Katara just couldn't bear a sad Toph. Toph was supposed to be brash and loud and cursing up a storm from the engine room; instead, the cargo bay was still in disarray from the job on Lilac and the ship was making a strange rattling sound and Katara hadn't had to tell Aang to ignore that shout from the engine room in over a week. It didn't feel right.

Nothing felt right. No _one_ felt right. But Katara couldn't fix any of it from where she was standing.

"I ― I can't read the characters," she said sheepishly, turning on the light and sitting next to him on the bed. "They're ancient..."

"Oh," he replied, yawning, and looked at the scroll, skimming over it "This is talking about the, uh, five-arm form. I cannot translate," he added sheepishly, "but it references the other scroll, so maybe this one comes after it!" Now that he was fully awake, he was getting excited about the scrolls, and he followed her back to her shuttle, where they quietly took the bag of them and made their way down to the cargo bay to begin practicing.

* * *

Mai stood at the door to the infirmary, staring hard at the body laying there on the bed. Diana was sitting next to it, but she had fallen asleep, her head on her dead mother's chest, hand clasped in the still one. It was almost poetic in its tragedy.

Who would be there to ― she swallowed and shook the thought away. She had come here for a _reason,_ and she had no intentions of letting her heart stop her mind. She'd always listened to her head first and her heart last, and although Katara and Ty Lee and Jet and Bee all seemed to think this was a terrible thing, there were times when she needed the control that her head gave her.

Quietly, she walked into the Infirmary, careful not to wake the grieving Diana, and picked through the drawers until she found the medicine she was here for ― it was no cure, but if she took it regularly, she should be able to buy herself more time. She picked out the little vial of clear liquid, then took the needle out of her pocket and drew out a dose; she would give herself the drug and sterilize the needle in her room like she had been doing every single night since Haru had brought his bag filled with medicines onto the ship.

She glanced back at the bed to make sure that Diana was still asleep, carefully replaced the vial in the exact same place it had been, then stood and swept out of the Infirmary ― and ran straight into Haru.

"I had wondered who was stealing that," he murmured, crossing his arms. She bit the inside of her lip and schooled her face into blankness.

"How long have you known?" she asked, and he sighed.

"I noticed a couple of weeks ago. I've been trying to catch you since. When did you get diagnosed?" He took the syringe from her, looking at it critically. "And please tell me this is sterile."

"Of course it is," she replied caustically. "Do you think I'm _stupid?"_

"Not at all," he said, slipping into the Infirmary and returning with a pair of gloves and an alcohol swab. He lifted her shirt to expose her side, and when she recoiled, he frowned at her. "This is supposed to be injected into a large muscle," he said quietly, "don't you know?"

She didn't reply. Haru pulled the gloves on, swabbed a spot on her side, and injected the medication, a more painful shot than she remembered, needle-sharp pain radiating through her lower back.

"How long ago were you diagnosed?" he asked again, and she looked away.

"Almost a year," she answered shortly.

"You wanted to see the 'Verse before..." he inferred, and she looked into the Infirmary, to the dead woman on the bed, and imagined herself there. Again, she wondered, who would be there to sit with her? "Well," Haru said, pulling her out of her reverie, "I'll start getting more of this every time I stock up. That could add ― maybe another ten or fifteen years, if we keep up the medication properly."

"That's good," she said, and turned to him, Companion training ― and, before the Training House, proper etiquette training back in the capital ― keeping her face completely blank. "Don't tell anyone."

Haru looked at her searchingly, and she wondered if he read between the lines, if he knew that _anyone_ really meant _the captain_. If he did, he didn't show it. "Of course not," he replied, and smiled. "Doctor-patient confidentiality. Your secret is safe with me."

"Thank you," she whispered, and swept off to her shuttle.

The moment she closed the door behind her, Mai slid to the floor, hand clamped tightly over her mouth and eyes screwed shut.

* * *

Toph was awakened much earlier than she would have liked (although her half-numb back pressed against the wall told her that pretty much everyone else was awake) by a flying ball of _Aang._ He was repeating her name over and over and over again.

"What?" she shouted, pushing him off of her bed and sitting up as well as she could. Haru and Katara walked into her room and she felt Katara's heart pounding through the wall. Her mouth went dry. "Is it ― did you find ― " she started, hardly daring to hope that the scrolls they had taken from Hama's skyplex might have had something.

"There was a whole two scrolls on healing," Aang cried, jumping on the balls of his feet. "I and Katara have been practicing from it since we left the skyplex, and Haru says he thinks we might be ready to try healing you!"

"Here," Katara said, and Haru picked her up and turned her so that she was on her stomach. "I can't promise that I'm good enough at this to do it yet, but ― well," she said, and Toph nodded into her pillow.

"Just try," she whispered, and she felt the cold water on her back, going abruptly numb right around the halfway point. She closed her eyes as the water seeped into her skin and she felt it tug on the muscles and there was a horrible, sudden pain in the arch of her spine as Katara pulled on the water, followed by a single moment of cold, seeping into her spine, and then ― agonizing pins and needles, spreading slowly down across her whole body. She cried out involuntarily, but Katara didn't pull away.

"It's working," she murmured, "the pain means it's working ― if you can feel it, Toph, can you feel it?"

"Mm-hmm," she whimpered, but Aang started laughing.

"Toph, if you hurt, that means it worked!" he cried, and she heard ― and felt, each jolt sending new fire up and down her nerves ― him jumping up and down, and Katara's cold hands left her back. Haru took her arm and gingerly helped her into a sitting position.

"You're still in bad shape, and you need to recover," he said sternly. "You'll have to work back up to doing the things you did before, understand? I want you and Katara to have healing sessions every day until that injury is completely healed. The last thing we want is for you to reopen it and mess yourself up ag― " she cut him off by decking him in the shoulder so hard he fell to the floor.

"I can feel my legs, you idiot, stop lecturing me and celebrate!"

* * *

Suki played with the fans over and over, recalling the old katas, things she had learned as a child and never been able to forget. Sokka's gift was still new, and she hadn't even been able to figure out where he'd gotten a pair of war fans, let alone what the make was. They felt right, though, good and strong and wonderfully _familiar._

She remembered the first time she'd ever picked up a pair of fans, her mother's pair, and she had used them to cool herself off. Mother had laughed at that and taken them from her to show her the very first trick ― how to open war fans properly. _Tessenjutsu_ was an ancient art, and one of the deadliest ― if it was done properly. It required intensive training, which was one reason why, in the age of guns and lasers, it had fallen by the wayside, practiced more for show than for actual damage.

Still, Suki was properly trained, her mother had seen to that, and although she could shoot a man dead at a hundred and fifty paces, the iron fans were her preferred weapon in close combat. She had missed them, more than she'd realized.

"What are those?" someone asked, and she turned to see Ty Lee hanging from the walkway like a monkey. She peered at the acrobat, and then to the fans, a seed of thought beginning to germinate: _Ty Lee feels useless among the crew; Suki feels alone among her ghosts_.

"Fans," she explained. "Have you ever heard of _tessenjutsu?"_

"Can't say that I have," Ty Lee replied, and dropped to the floor. "Is that the art of dancing with fans?"

"No," Suki answered, and then attacked, locking her fans into a shield and pushing Ty Lee to the ground with it, immediately unlocking them and placing one at her throat and one at her stomach. Ty Lee went white, but Suki just laughed until the texture of metal in her hands spiraled her down into memory so sharp she tasted dust and iron.

Suki hadn't fought with fans since she and On Ji ― the last ― had sparred on the day of On Ji's death at the hands of the Alliance. It was bitter cold that morning, and she'd initiated the fight less for practice than to keep moving and work up body heat until the sun cleared the horizon. She had lost the spar and laughed brightly and optimistically and she had congratulated her student on her excellent learning and On Ji had turned to compliment back on Suki and she had said _I really think this is it, it'll all turn around today_.

"It's the art of _fighting_ with fans," she said, shaking off the past (badly) and holding out a hand to Ty Lee. "It's the traditional martial art of the Kyoshi Warriors."

"Ohh," Ty Lee chirped. "I've heard of them. On Shadow, right, from the Earth Kingdom? Whatever happened to them?"

Suki took a deep breath. "I'm the only one left," she said, and then looked Ty Lee over critically, idle hopes, long-set-aside, blooming from the seed. "How would you like to be the second member of the reformed Kyoshi Warriors?"

There was a moment where several emotions crossed over Ty Lee's open face, from surprise to suspicion to a wide-eyed understanding that left Suki raw and _exposed:_ Ty Lee might have been a ditz, but she knew _people_ in a way that even Katara couldn't compare to, and it looked like she could see how much it was costing Suki to invite her to join her warriors, to try and start over on the skeletons of people she'd loved. But then Ty Lee smiled wide and unassuming, and Suki wondered if she'd been imagining things.

"Sure," she replied, like it was the easiest decision in the world. "Where do I start?"

"Right here," Suki replied, handing over one of her fans, half on the ship and half on Shadow. She tried to focus on the person in front of her and not on the ghost of On Ji floating over Ty Lee's face; but when the shift happened, it was abrupt and complete ― she made eye contact and saw the familiar look of the novice watching the teacher for a cue, and suddenly, she was in the present again, where she had the power to make a change in another person's life, instead of the past, where she was impotent and alone. "With the _tessen,_ the traditional war fan. What do you know about Kyoshi?" she asked, and Ty Lee blinked.

"Um, she was an Avatar, wasn't she? A really long time ago?"

Suki nodded. "Almost four thousand years ago, Avatar Kyoshi separated an island from the mainland of the Earth Kingdom, way back on Earth That Was."

"Why?" Ty Lee asked, accidentally cutting herself with Suki's fan. "Ouch!"

"Watch it," she said, grinning. "The edges are sharp. Don't forget, this is a _weapon."_

* * *

Katara helped Toph limp into the engine room (she had touched the floor and immediately cried out at the state of the cargo bay), and left Haru with her, taking Aang into the cargo bay to start practicing some of the more offensive moves on the waterbending scrolls. The cargo bay was already occupied, though ― Suki and Ty Lee were in there.

"Are we interrupting?" she asked, and Suki turned to her, her face alight in a way that Katara had never seen before. She looked utterly _alive._

"Not at all," Suki replied, "I was teaching Ty Lee _tessenjustu."_

"I'm the first member of the reformed Kyoshi Warriors!" Ty Lee cheered, and Katara went over to heal the bloody cuts on her hands from playing with the fans. "Me and Suki are starting 'em back up, beginning today."

"The Kyoshi Warriors?" Aang asked, walking in, arms full of scrolls. "I know who they are! I didn't know they still existed."

"Technically, they don't," Suki said, her face darkening slightly. "I'm the only one left."

Aang blinked. "So... they do," he told her, like it was obvious. She turned to him, tilting her head slightly, so he went on, "As long as one person still remembers, the art is not lost. That is... how the saying goes," he said sheepishly, and Suki smiled again in that same brilliant light.

"I guess you're right, then," she said confidently. "The Kyoshi Warriors are still going strong."

"That's _four thousand years_ ," Ty Lee chirped. "There's an _awesome_ history," she added, eyes wide and slightly manic. "You should hear the story about Yoshitsune fighting off a spear with just a pair of fans! I never knew you could do all of this stuff."

"I can see you've made a few mistakes," Katara said, healing the last of the wounds. Suki shrugged.

"No more than I did when I was learning. She's picking it up fast," she said fondly. "So, what brings you two to the cargo bay?"

"Waterbending," she said, pointing to the scrolls in Aang's arms. "From the scrolls we got out of Hama's office. Would you like to watch?"

"I'll do you one better," Suki replied quickly, and took her fan from Ty Lee. "How about a spar? Fans versus waterbending? I bet I can beat you," she challenged, and Katara grinned back at her.

"Ha!" she scoffed dramatically, and turned to Ty Lee. "Get me a bucket and fill it with water. I have to show Miss Rei just how mistaken she is!"

Ty Lee rushed off and returned moments later with a bucket, which Katara pulled on the moment it was close enough for her to do so, and wreathed the water in a ribbon around her. Suki snapped her fans open and faced her, looking more vibrant than Katara had ever seen her on Sihnon. Ty Lee and Aang both stood in between them, looking back and forth, and then Ty Lee shouted, "Aaaaaand, _go!"_ and they both ran to either side of the cargo bay, giving Suki and Katara plenty of room to fight.

Suki made the first move, running forward and slashing out with her fans; Katara swirled her water in the air between them to knock her off-balance, but Suki switched gears mid-move and rolled against the water, coming at her from another angle. She paused to think about what the scrolls had said to do next, and Suki took the opening to cut her across the arm.

"Go Suki!" Ty Lee cried, while Aang booed overdramatically. Katara smirked.

Thinking wasn't going to win her this fight ― she'd have to feel it. She twisted and pulled the water low, turning it to ice as Suki ran forward again, tripping her up, and then jerking upwards and freezing Suki in place. It only held for a second ― she hit the ground with her fans to break the ice and once it had started to splinter, she shifted her legs to break it the rest of the way. Katara pulled the ice into a ribbon of water again and roped one end of it around Suki's arm. It worked for a moment, but then Suki flipped herself into the air and broke the ribbon, coming down on her feet easily and locking her fans together into a single circle, which she used as a shield, running forward before Katara could regain control of the water and knocking her off her feet.

"Yield," Suki said, but she pulled on the water and looped it around Suki's ankle, pulling her feet out from under her. Vaguely, she was aware that the cheering sections for both of them had grown ― Mai was standing with Aang, smirking, while Jet loudly cheered Suki on, and Sokka didn't seem to know who to cheer for.

She pulled the water up again and threw it against Suki, hitting her full in the chest, and then she froze it and walked up to Suki. "Yield," she said, raising an eyebrow, but Suki had one arm free, which she used to break the ice and give her enough room to shift out of the thin, brittle ice. Katara pulled the water back into a ribbon and began dancing with it, feeling steps she had learned in Companion training, going from offensive to defensive as Suki dodged and attacked with ease.

Without even fully thinking about it, she twisted the whips of water into extensions of each arm, which only worked for a moment because Suki was too quick be overwhelmed by only two of any weapon ― Katara remembered the pentapus form and slid straight into it from a dance step, raising the water around her in tendrils and lashing out with each of them.

Suki gave as good as she got, though, and slashed each tendril before it could hit her, coming closer and closer in an ever-tightening spiral with each cut of her fans, and she got right up to Katara at the same moment that Katara froze a sickle of ice and held it to Suki's throat. They looked at each other and each raised an eyebrow.

"I think that's a draw," Sokka said, and they both laughed, moving away from each other. She held out a hand, which Suki shook.

"When I'm not so rusty," Suki told her, grinning, "and you've learned a few more of those moves, let's do this again and see who wins then."

"Sounds like a plan," she agreed.

"You did the five-arm!" Aang squealed, cheering for her, and she smiled at him ― she had! "You said that was the scariest form and you just did it!"

"It's like you said," Zuko said, and she started ― she hadn't even realized he was watching. He was, she noted, sitting next to Mai, where _her_ fans had been cheering her on. "Waterbending is empathetic. You felt it, didn't you?" he asked, smiling genuinely.

"I did," she replied, grinning. "I _danced."_


	11. 10. The Purest Form

At the Fucanglong Docks on Beaumonde

Jet and Pipsqueak hauled the box they had stored the body in out of the cargo bay and laid it gently at Diana's feet — no matter what he felt for the woman personally, he knew what it was like to lose a loved one.

"We could take you to St. Albans," he offered, but she shook her head.

"You've done plenty. Come with me, I'll get you the — " she was cut off by Alliance men storming up, guns raised, followed by a man with long hair pulled into a low ponytail.

"Captain Jonathan Reynolds, you are ordered by law to stand down."

He glared at Diana, who looked just as surprised as he was, but then he remembered what this was about: the registration! He'd forgotten entirely, in the chaos of Toph and the job and then the body and... oh, _cào_. He raised his hands, and so did Pipsqueak — he didn't even have a chance to warn his crew or hide Aang or _anything._ They were dead in the water.

Still, he tried for the charming smile. "What's the problem, sir?" he asked cheekily, and the man smiled at him like a cat with a mouse.

"You failed to report at the nearest Alliance outpost," the man replied. "All crews sailing on a Firefly-class vessel were to report for registration three days ago."

"Yeah, well, I forgot," he said honestly. "There a reason for the, ah," he waved his hands at the green-robed Alliance men, "this?"

"We did not find what we were looking for on any of the other Fireflies who _did_ report," he started, and Jet tilted his head.

"You've got a list o' all the Fireflies in the 'Verse? That seems a bit..."

The man blinked. "We had information that a Firefly known to be traveling with a Companion involved with the conspiracy to kill the Fire Lord docked at this port four days ago. Captain Jonathan Reynolds, you are hereby bound by law for aiding and abetting a fugitive," the man recited, and began to handcuff him, but Jet, reacting with gut instinct and the reflexes of a war-veteran, whirled around, punched him across the face, and pulled out his gun, managing to land a decently impressive shot to the man's torso, shooting from the hip. Immediately, the green men swarmed him, but he had given Pipsqueak enough time to bolt inside and get the warning out.

The man stood up, dusting off his clothing — and his armor. Of course. It was never that easy. "Add resisting arrest and attempting to kill an Operative of the Parliament to the list of grievances," he told his men, and Jet mouthed the word _operative..._ what the hell did _that_ mean? "Sweep the ship," he barked.

* * *

"Where is Aang?" Pipsqueak shouted, barreling into the dining room "We got Alliance incoming _now!"_ he yelled, and Suki took off for the cargo bay before she had consciously processed what he was saying — Aang was in Katara's shuttle, too close. She hit the cargo bay at the same time as the green-robed men did, and her fans snapped in her hands.

She lunged for the first one, slashing him straight across the throat with a single jerk of her wrist, and then used his falling body to vault into the second one feet-first, but hit the ground awkwardly on the follow-up and stumbled. The second man went backwards into a third, and she snapped a fan closed, using it as a makeshift knife to stab with the razor-sharp edges and with all of her strength into the soft tissue just above second man's collarbone, and he went down, gurgling. Another crucial second was lost as she fought to wrench her fan out of him; she prepared herself mentally, like she had so many times before, for the fight to shift out of her favor.

In her experience, a successful ambush or initial attack gave you around ten seconds, before your opponent would regain his or her footing. Suki was up to seven, outnumbered — and badly — but she kept fighting to keep the men occupied for as long as she could. She had just slit the third throat and identified the fourth target when a shot rang out and the right leg exploded in pain.

She screamed as her fans fell from her fingers, senseless for a split second before the ground struck her hard in the shoulder; someone shouted, someone began running, and someone opened the door above and across from her. "No!" she shrieked, as Aang yelled her name and hit the green-robed men with a violent blast of air.

"It's the Avatar!" someone yelled as the man who had shot her calmly walked into the cargo bay. He held his pistol to her face and she looked up at him defiantly, accepting her fate and denying him the satisfaction of seeing fear in her eyes, but just as he started to squeeze the trigger, someone tackled him, sending his shot wide, ringing as it hit the wall behind her. The world began to shift out of focus.

* * *

Sokka hovered over Suki, one hand on her back and the other ineffectually attempting to staunch the bleeding centered from her knee, and tried to think clearly. But he couldn't; all he could think of was the sound of Suki's scream and the blood on her face and hands as she looked into the barrel of a gun, unflinching. Everyone was shouting, wind was pouring around the cargo bay like a waterfall, chaos and raised weapons and blurred motion — and then the metal of the ship warped up and wrapped itself around the man with the ponytail.

Toph walked, slowly and unevenly, staggering against the wall, into the suddenly still room.

"You're gonna walk away," she said, voice low and dangerous, "right now."

The man smiled. "Metal-bending," he cried, laughing. "I _am_ impressed. However, you might do to learn from this mistake, Lady Metalbender, and research your enemies before you face them." With that, he pulled on the metal and it gave a horrible _screech_ as he bent it away from him. Toph shifted her foot and grunted as her still-weak legs struggled to hold her up, but turned it into a bending form and used it to twist a large chunk of metal off of the floor — chased up by pavement from underneath the ship — and threw it at him, but he caught it and broke it into two clear pieces as it flew by his head. Toph's hand was clutching the wall so tightly that it was twisting around her fingers like a blanket, her face white and angry and betrayed as she sank to her knees, gasping for breath and mouthing curses.

"A good effort," the man started, folding his hands into his long sleeves, and then Aang landed on him, yelling like a wild animal. The man let out a shout and reacted violently, hitting Aang in the chest with an arm and a rock, sending him sprawling to the ground.

Sokka jerked as a hand dug into his side, and looked down to see Suki, sweat and blood streaked on her face and a dangerous distance in her eyes, pulling him closer. Terror, unrelated to Aang's predicament, rose up in him.

"Get — Aang — out — " she choked, her fingers slipping away from him. Sokka grabbed her arm convulsively and opened his mouth to speak words he had no time to prepare.

"Suki, listen — " he started, as the ship began to vibrate with the liftoff initiation sequence and rattle with the damage Toph had done to it.

"Get to the bridge, stop the pilot!" the man shouted, motioning to his men, but Aang was on his feet, prepared to fight them, and even though the man could match Toph's element and she was barely recovering from a terrible injury, she was still a powerful bender with three limbs on the ground and a nearly _demonic_ fury on her face, and Sokka could stand and he could — he could _probably_ fight if he could make himself let go of Suki. It didn't look good, but they'd all faced worse odds. And then the tide turned again with movement behind Toph, from the direction of the engine room.

"Oh, _boys,"_ the Duke said in a sing-song voice, dragging Toph's giant weapon — the Maria Mark Three, she had called it — into the room with Pipsqueak, Zuko, and Katara all helping him move it. "You might want to close your eyes."

Toph grinned viciously and used her weapon as a crutch to lean on, standing just high enough to hit a series of buttons with one hand and shove the ball of her palm into the floor with the other — to what end, he didn't know, but he _did_ know enough to get out of the way of anyone with _that_ look on her face and a gun _that_ large in her hand.

He hoisted Suki into his arms as gingerly as he could and rushed to get out of the hyper-Gatling gun's blast radius, to where Katara had water at the ready to heal her. There was a single moment, right as the gun's whining reached fever pitch, where everyone scrambled to move at once, before the first pulse tore out.

It was blinding, a livid white beam — an ultra-powerful anti-aircraft laser — appeared as Toph pulled a lever and twisted it down sharply. It only lasted a fraction of a second, one huge flash of white, and then there weren't any more green-clad men, just a quickly-dulling red streak leading out of the cargo bay and onto a wall of rock that Toph must have put up as a barrier to protect everyone outside of the ship. Everyone stared in shock at the gun and the tiny mechanic clutching its trigger.

"Fire the weapon again"

Sokka turned away from Toph and cursed violently: the leader, hair falling out of his ponytail and face flushed with anger, was holding Aang by the neck and leading him into the gun's sights.

"Go on," he hissed. "Do it."

* * *

Jet and Diana had just finished fighting off their captors when the wall went up. He tapped it, confused, listening to his ship on the other side, where a low whine was steadily going up the scale, and realization hit him almost too late. He wasn't sure how he moved as fast as he did, but one second, he was standing at the rock wall and the next, he and Diana were on the ground and rolling several yards away. He threw his arms over his head as the whine gave way to a noise like the sound barrier breaking, too loud to even hear.

"I know what that was," he slurred, getting to his feet, the vibrations of the sound and the blast making him stagger like a drunk — he'd only felt it once before, when Toph had pulled out her biggest gun to shoot a Reaver ship that was chasing them straight out of the sky. "That was Toph's — oh, what _now?"_ he snapped, as someone grabbed him by the arm and bent it backwards, twisting his gun out of his hand. He looked to the side, half-expecting it to be Diana, but he saw that she was similarly captured by an Alliance officer — not one of the green-robed ones with the Operative; this one wore red.

"Jonathan Reynolds, I presume," a woman's voice purred, perilously close to his ear. She marched him around the rock wall and into his own cargo bay, followed by Diana, before passing him off to one of her soldiers. He tried to attack when she transferred him, but the soldier had him unarmed and in a vice grip. "Well, well, well," the woman drawled as she walked past him, and he finally got a good look at the room: in addition to a series of gaping holes in the metal, there was a scorch mark straight down the center of his cargo bay, and standing right in the middle of it was the Operative, holding Aang by the throat, daring Toph to shoot him with the Maria Mark Three. "Looks like I got here just in time."

The woman looked harmless — too harmless to be safe — and it was Zuko who stood up — he was covered in blood, whose blood? — and faced her. "Azula!" he shouted, fire springing to his fingers, and the woman — the princess? — laughed.

"Hello, Zuzu," she trilled, grinning at the Operative. "Looks like my idea worked," she said lightly. "Pass the boy over, we'll take him back to Sihnon." The Operative watched her carefully, seemingly weighing his options, before he passed Aang to the soldier next to him. Zuko made a move as if to attack, but then the princess raised two fingers to Aang's throat with a pointed look at him, and he froze, eyes darting from Azula to the small group huddled behind him to Aang and back.

"Princess Azula," the Operative said. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Which pleasure?" she asked, with false innocence, "The saving of your life or the fixing of the mission you botched?"

"You're one to speak of botching a mission, my lady," the Operative replied through clenched teeth. "The Parliament brought me on to solve the problem _you_ failed to contain at the Capital." The princess didn't seem concerned, merely tinkering with the communicator, two fingers still pointed at the Avatar. She finally heaved a sigh and motioned towards him.

"You, Captain," she said congenially, "tell your pilot that if he takes off, I'll mount his lungs over my fireplace."

He gaped at her for a second, but then she held the open button for him, watching emotionlessly with eyes the exact shape and color of Zuko's and nothing like them at all, so he leaned forward a bit. "Longshot, turn her off," he said, eyes never leaving Azula's face, and resisted the urge to spit at her.

"That will do," she sighed, as the ship stopped humming. "You — " she said, indicating to her soldiers, "I want you to protect all entrances to the cargo bay — there are six," she added, helpfully. "Ensure that no one goes in or out."

"Princess, everyone on this ship is bound by law for — " the Operative began, but Azula stopped him with a glare.

"I don't care about the law," she replied distastefully, and tapped Aang's shoulder lightly, gaze locked back on Zuko, who was tensing and untensing like he was trying to gauge the best moment to attack, and failing to find an opening. "I care about getting the Avatar back to where he belongs — a box in my possession." Jet glanced at Aang and saw raw _fear_ on his face at the prospect of going back into cold sleep.

The Operative turned, expression violent. "You cannot think to — " he started, spluttering, and then scowled. "In that case, Princess Azula, you are under arrest for obstruction of justice," he said coldly, like he had just won a great battle. Azula paused for a moment, then burst out laughing.

"Do you feel _powerful_ saying that to me?" she asked condescendingly, and didn't wait for a response. "At any rate, Long Feng, I assure you that I am not under your jurisdiction."

With a snarl, the Operative stomped hard once, bringing up the metal of his ship — his ship! — to encase her, but she was faster, stepping out of the way of the warping metal with the agility of a cat.

"I hereby — " he started, raising his hands to bring rock up from the dock beneath them, but she stepped aside again and turned her hand from Aang's throat in a graceful arc around her head; time seemed to slow down as they watched, transfixed, blue lightning forming and crackling around her, and then crashing down on the Operative, striking the back of the neck in a blinding white flash. Thunder snapped through the air, and then silence.

(Distantly, he filed a note away in his head that she had struck, angling the bolt so that it hit the Operative right at the start of the spinal cord, and recoiled, keeping the bolt from his body down into the metal of the ship, with precision accuracy and timing. That took planning and research, and power and control in a measure he'd never heard of before.)

"Does anyone else want to stand in my way?" she asked softly, hands steady like a surgeon's. No one responded; there was a strange look on Zuko's face, something between loathing and apprehension, and even though Jet internally screamed at him to do _something,_ he honestly couldn't think of anything Zuko _could_ do.

The Operative lay still on the floor of the ship, body blackened from the face down.

"I thought so," she answered herself, and then looked to her soldiers with a tilt of her head. "Girls, stay where you are until the Avatar has been removed," she ordered quietly, turning around and directing the soldier holding Aang to march away. "Now, I couldn't care much less about the _biaozi_ or those who have sheltered her. I'm going to be _very_ generous and even allow you to go about your way — minus the Avatar, of course," she added, smiling benevolently. "In fact, I would _love_ to see you try to rescue him," she continued. "It would really brighten up the boredom."

With that, she walked out of the cargo bay; her soldiers waited a few more minutes before releasing them abruptly, and then they too marched out of the ship, leaving them standing silently in the ruined, warped, and scorched cargo bay — without Aang.


	12. 11. Debt

On _Freedom_

"Hurry up on fixing those holes," Jet snapped, and Toph resisted the urge to snap his head off. He was acting like a complete _ass,_ like he was the only person on the entire gorram ship who cared that Aang was in the Fire Nation's clutches - that Azula was probably going to lock him back up in cold sleep for who knew how long? - and she could just remember how fear had lanced through him when she had mentioned it, a complete, paralyzing terror, and it hurt her to think about.

She was still fighting an uphill battle with her legs and her spine, so Haru insisted that she do as much as she could sitting down with upright posture, but she was agitated and infuriated, which meant that the whole ship was shaking as she worked tirelessly, her bending accidentally warping the floor at her feet more times than she could count.

" _I'm working on it_ ," she replied hoarsely, welding a piece of sheet metal in place. Her throat was dry and cracked and stopped-up with a tight ball of needles.

"Well, work _faster_ ," Jet hissed through clenched teeth, and she growled at him.

"You want this to go faster? Pick up a torch and _start helping._ "

"Fine," he said sharply, a sign of how desperate he really was: Jet _never_ did menial labor on the ship. "Where is the other torch?"

"Engine room, above the cot," she answered, without looking up. Jet stalked off and returned a moment later, then went to work repairing the other side of the cargo bay in silence. After only a few minutes, Katara came in.

"How much longer?" she asked, voice quiet, and Toph bit her tongue hard.

"It gets longer every time someone stops me and asks that," she snarled, and Katara left hastily.

She drew in a shaky breath under the welding mask, gut twisting. Aang was so _young,_ too young to be imprisoned and tortured and hurt the way Azula would hurt him, and - and Aang was her second-ever friend, only the second person ever to reach out to her by _choice_ and care about her and try to make her feel better. No one ever wanted to be friends with Toph, but Aang - and Iroh - had, for some reason they had both seen through her mask when no one else had in her whole life, and she'd already lost one and she _couldn't_ lose another.

Hot tears slid underneath the leather of her visor and gathered at the chin of the mask, and was glad they were there to hide them. She bit her tongue hard; _stop being scared and do something about it_ , she thought.

She'd get Aang out of the princess's clutches, if it was the last damn thing she did.

* * *

"Calm down," Mai said, as Katara paced. Everyone on the ship was tense, snapping at people they never snapped at, glaring holes in the wall, rearranging things over and over again, hiding out in their bunks and pretending to sleep - Aang's imprisonment hung heavy over all of them.

Mai hadn't been there to see it - she had left in her shuttle when they'd hit atmo on Beaumonde to do some shopping (picking up clothes for Katara, mostly, so that she might not have to wear that same now-shabby dress) and when she'd returned to see the cargo bay in pieces and Toph screaming hysterical curses out into the docks for no apparent reason. It was Katara who had told her, voice shaky, what had happened.

It remained to be seen, she had said, if Suki could still walk.

Now, they were ostensibly sharing a pot of tea while Toph and Jet repaired the cargo bay, but neither of them had touched their tea and it had gone cold almost an hour ago.

"It's going to take a while," she said evenly, smoothing over her own fears with years of training. The 'Verse needed Aang. Azula had something up her sleeve, something more than merely locking him up in cold sleep, she was sure of it, and only Aang would be able to stop her.

Mai knew of Azula from childhood, although their paths had only crossed a few times; the calculating way that the princess had looked at her and spoke to her had convinced her that she should get as far away from Azula as she could. She knew more than enough to know that Azula was dangerous, in a way that only Zuko or Ty Lee might possibly understand. The princess was a perfectionist, and once she decided that she was going to do something, have something, create or destroy something - that was it. She had tried to get her claws around Mai in their teenage years, with sweet-tasting gifts and favors that quickly gave way to suggestions and the offer of being Azula's own personal bodyguard.

Mai didn't know exactly when she had started to see the cost of Azula's kindness, but after the offer came, she had fled the capital to become a Companion, the only thing she could think of that would disgust Azula so much that she would forget about the gloomy knife-thrower.

It was her second deepest secret - not even Katara knew why Mai had left the comfortable life of Fire Nation nobility to become a Companion.

If she was honest with herself, Azula was the only person she had ever truly feared, and one of only two times in her entire life she had listened to her heart and her gut rather than cold logic. Her instincts had said _run_ when she had gotten the invitation from the princess, and she had run, sharply cutting off her noble life without so much as a goodbye to her family. Not that she cared much for them, or that escaping Azula had been the _only_ force driving her out of the Forbidden City - it was the catalyst, at least.

The other reason and the other decision settled heavy in her mind, blackening her emotions until they were the color of despair.

"What's wrong?" Katara asked, startling her. She looked up.

"You have to ask?" she replied, and Katara watched her, eyes calculating.

"Something has been bothering you," she said softly, "for a while. What is it?"

Mai looked into Katara's face and considered, for a moment, telling her everything - after all, Katara had been there when Mai's grandmother had died, a bed-ridden, drooling invalid, stripped down by disease into something barely human - but it would break Katara's heart to hear, and she had enough to deal with right now. She didn't need to know, not yet, and hopefully not ever. Mai never wanted to see that look in Katara's eyes, the same look of horrible understanding that had crossed over Haru's face when he had caught her stealing medicine.

"Katara," she said quietly, "don't ask me that question."

It was a mark of their friendship and shared experiences that Katara simply nodded and allowed the topic to drop.

* * *

Following the scene in the cargo bay, Diana - Yue, Sokka remembered, Chief Arnook's lost daughter - had decided to stay on the ship. She sat in the dining room with him, Bee, and Longshot during the long, awful wait for the ship to be ready to fly again.

"Those men called the boy the Avatar," she said quietly, staring into her untouched cup. "Is it true?"

"Yes," he replied shortly. Even though some part of him knew he shouldn't trust her, there was something about the way she looked right now that told him she wasn't planning any cons. In fact, she looked more like she was planning vengeance. "He is. He's been frozen since the Age of Bending."

"And the princess wants to put him right back in the ice?" she asked, and then nodded. "So, how do we stop her?"

"You're in the crew, now?" Bee said, raising an eyebrow and glancing at Longshot. "Since when?"

"I still owe you," Diana - Yue - replied. "They say the Avatar can bring balance to the world," she continued, sighing, and ran a hand through her hair. "I'll fight for that."

"We ain't startin' up the war," Bee snapped, and Yue turned to her, face hard and cold. "We _won't,"_ Bee repeated, then drained her cup of something which was not tea in one gulp, and raised it high in a mockery of a toast. "But our little show at the Water Tribe revitalized the Independent movement... and now the border and rim systems are all fired up about _rebellion,_ gonna take down the Alliance regime with the help of the Avatar! It's such a mess," she said, voice falling as she leaned forward, stretching over the table bitterly. "All I want is for the fighting to _stop,_ just finally stop," she added in a small voice, reflecting Sokka's own emotions regarding the war. Longshot rubbed her back, and looked to Yue.

"I know what it looks like," he said gravely, "but we fought to protect Aang, not start up a war we've already lost."

There was a long silence, and then Yue shrugged. "Fine by me," she said, almost flippantly, glancing around the table. "I'm still on board." She muttered something else, the words quiet and strung-together so much that he wasn't sure if she said _I'm sick of the fighting, myself_ , or _I'm sick of fighting myself_.

Funny, he thought vaguely. The only time he'd ever seen her tell the truth, and she said it like a lie.

* * *

Zuko sat outside the Infirmary with Haru and Ty Lee because he didn't know where else to go. He wanted to go to Katara, but he just didn't know what to say to her, and she had disappeared after his sister had dragged Aang off - did she blame him, he wondered? It _was_ his family, after all, and his fault that she was even involved in all of this.

He had tried to sit in the dining room with Bee, Longshot, Sokka, and the white-haired woman they all called Diana, but there was an oppressive atmosphere there that he thought was because of Suki, sleeping in the Infirmary, leg bandaged up. Katara's healing had done wonders for her, Haru said, but they wouldn't know for certain until she woke up if she could walk again. Even Zuko, who tried to stay removed from the crew, felt the tension there - Suki had just been planning to restart the Kyoshi Warriors, reform a part of her past, and she'd been _so_ happy to be able to spar with Katara and teach Ty Lee...

Suki had risked something _more_ than her life to protect Aang - she had risked her dream of a new future. And for what? They had failed to save him from the Operative and they had failed to save him from Azula. Jet swore that they were going to storm Azula's ship and bring Aang back, but Jet swore a lot of things, and Zuko was the only one who knew Azula well enough to know how hopeless that was.

Although - he glanced at Ty Lee's pale face - maybe he wasn't the only one. Ty Lee had left the capital before Azula had really started gaining power, but she had been friends with the princess in childhood, so maybe she understood as well as he did that the princess was a force to be reckoned with.

He wanted to scream in frustration - he should have been able to do something, to stop her! But Azula had always been the better one, the faster one, the smarter one, and he'd gotten into so much trouble in the past for acting without thinking, and he'd hesitated at the wrong moment for just too long. He had tried to find another opening to attack her, but he'd missed his window. It seemed like he was damned no matter what he did, right or wrong, cautious or impulsive.

Azula was right - he _was_ pathetic.

* * *

On _Desdemona_

Aang shouted until he was hoarse, beat against the door of the room, kicked and screamed until all of his energy was spent, before collapsing against the wall. Deep breaths, he thought - maybe the others were still safe. Calm down, Monk Gyatso had taught him, how to deal with fear and helplessness. _Take in your surroundings and ask yourself: what can I do?_

What could he do? He knew he was en route to the Core, and that Azula wanted to put him back into cold sleep, and the thought terrified him so much it blocked everything else out. What if he went to sleep and woke up and everyone he knew was dead - again? Katara, Toph, Mai, Ty Lee, Zuko, Jet, Haru, Sokka, Suki, the Duke, Pipsqueak, Bee, Longshot... all gone.

He shook his head in an effort to clear it. He knew what that path led to - he could feel it trying to come on, the screaming _rage_ of the Avatar State dancing like ice on his nerves. He couldn't give into it: while it might help him destroy the ship, it would leave him alone, floating in space, and he'd heard that was near-instant death. No, what he needed now was control.

Yangchen had said that he needed to unlock his chakras, but he wasn't even entirely sure what his chakras _were,_ let alone how to unlock them. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, forcing his chaotic thoughts into silence.

There was no way that the crew would leave him in the Fire Nation's clutches. He knew that - if nothing else, Toph would scream herself sick and lead the charge herself while Katara initiated mutiny and locked herself on the bridge to bring the ship in to find him. They were his _friends,_ and they cared about him. Like Yangchen, and Katara, had told him: he was not alone. They would never leave him to that fate.

What he had to do was ensure that he could properly help them when the time came to do so. Yangchen had said that he couldn't unlock his chakras in the spirit world, but now that he couldn't find someone in the real world to help him, he thought that maybe he could find some knowledgeable spirit there who could tell him how, and then he could return to his body and do it on his own. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than ranting at a locked door until he went blue in the face.

He let out a deep breath, reached out in his mind, and opened his eyes - he was still in the cell, looking at his own body, tattoos glowing white. He shook off the sense of disassociation and fled the ship, making his way to the silent temple Yangchen had brought him to.

"Avatar Yangchen?" he asked, shouted at the walls, but she didn't show up. He searched the empty temple until he found an old man, dressed in orange, sitting alone in the belfry in the lotus position with a look of determined meditation on his face. "Hello?"

The spirit opened one eye, and then grinned. "Avatar Aang," he said, "I have waited a _very_ long time for you."

* * *

"What is he doing?" Azula asked the guard, who was standing outside the locked door. The woman shook her head.

"He shouted and hit the wall a lot at first, but he's been quiet for a while."

"Hmm," she mused.

* * *

On _Freedom_

"You got a lock on the nav-sat?" Jet asked, and Longshot nodded. "Follow it, but keep a good distance, don't go hard burn until we're all ready."

Longshot nodded once, and Jet made his way into the dining room. Slowly, as he and Toph had finished fixing the cargo bay, the dining room had filled up with his crew, one by one, all knowing without having to ask that the next stage was planning. He looked around - Bee was at the head of the table, Toph was in her usual spot, the Duke and Pipsqueak were facing each other, their poker game untouched in front of them, Zuko was brooding in the alcove with Sokka and Diana, Katara and Mai were sitting side-by-side, Haru was standing next to Toph, and Ty Lee was sitting on the table beside Mai, flipping Suki's fans through her fingers over and over.

"All right," he said gravely, "here's how it is."

* * *

Bee stood by Longshot as they came in range of the Tower-class. They hadn't yet deployed gunships, but she knew they were going to, and they would have been stupid not to plan for it. While Longshot dodged the big ones, Jet - along with the three benders - would take one of the shuttles and make for the hangar while Sokka - along with Mai, Diana, and Ty Lee - would take the other shuttle to make for the other side of the hangar, to trip up the gunships.

The _Freedom,_ meanwhile, wouldn't bother with the hangar. Toph had instructed the Duke in how to properly use her Maria Mark Three, and he and Pipsqueak were at the ready, suited up in the hermetically-sealed cargo bay, prepared to open up the bottom of it and use the hyper-Gatling gun to tear an opening into the center section of the Tower-class, into which Longshot would fly the ship and they would land. Zuko was the only one who knew the layout of the ship, so his team was going to break for the prison while Sokka's team distracted the gunners and her team took on Azula.

It was a dangerous, thin plan. She clutched Longshot's shoulder tight; odds were, they wouldn't all come out of this one alive. She simply prayed that they got Aang out.

That was all that mattered at this point - get Aang out. Do the job, she thought, at any and all cost.

"There they go," she whispered, as the whole bottom of the Tower lit up with gunships. She hit the open all button on the intercom. "We got incoming ships. Shuttles deploy in fifteen seconds," she barked.

"Strap yourself in," Longshot said quietly.

As soon as she was in her seat, he jerked the controls hard to the left and they careened past the first line of gunships. Bee counted down from fifteen as they swerved past bullets and ships, Longshot taking the ship left and then right and then up and then a sharp drop down to avoid a crafty gunner that had remembered they had three dimensions to work in - and then, "All right, that's fifteen," she said quietly, and Longshot glanced at the controls.

"Both shuttles are deployed," he said, and then hit the comm button. "Pipsqueak, Duke, at the ready."

They had to give Jet and Sokka time to get to the hangar - she could barely see the two shuttles dodging fire with much more grace than they were, shooting straight for the hangar. There was a blast from beneath them, and the black was briefly lit up as Pipsqueak and the Duke fired the first round from Maria, taking out a whole row of gunships. Longshot pulled the ship into a near-vertical climb, daring the gunships to chase them (she heard the Duke shout an expletive over the intercom), pulling _Freedom_ into position.

"Pipsqueak, _now!"_ she shouted, and another brilliant white blast shot from beneath them, goring a huge gash into the Tower's side as they swerved up and Longshot rolled the ship in the black to bring it in. She felt the ship rock as what must have been ten-thousand small-caliber bullets hit them, but it wasn't enough to cause a hull breach.

There was a horrible _feel_ of tearing metal reverberating through the ship as Longshot pushed _Freedom_ at almost full burn into the hole Maria had torn into the tower. Once they were in, he cut the power as bits of shorn metal plinked off the backside of the ship. Everything in front of them was dark except for a few sparks and pipes discharging into the vacuum; she tried not to think about all the people they had just killed.

Do the job.

Any and all cost.

She pulled her helmet on and loaded up her last weapons and ammo, the only ones she didn't already have stashed somewhere on her body, and ran for the cargo bay, her husband right behind her.

They joined up with Pipsqueak and the Duke - now, the only protected place on the ship was the Infirmary, where Haru kept watch on the still-unconscious Suki, and that would stay closed, for the duration. If anyone on the crew got hurt, they were on their own. She shouldered her rifle and led the charge into the empty sector of the ship.

* * *

Mai loaded several bolts into her crossbow, preparing to leave the shuttle and go into the hangar. Ty Lee was nervously playing with Suki's fans beside her.

"Are you sure you want to take those?" Diana asked derisively, and Ty Lee nodded firmly.

"I'm a Kyoshi Warrior now," she replied gravely. "Suki would do it, but she's still out, so it's up to me."

"You've only been a Kyoshi Warrior for a day," Mai pointed out, and Ty Lee shook her head.

"I know, but this was important to Suki." _And_ , she didn't say, _this is the only thing I can do to help_.

Sokka joined them then, sweating from all the madcap flying he'd had to do to bring them into the hangar and away from Maria. "All right, we're in the clear. Toph must've been working on the electrical system, 'cause the hangar closed behind us. We can go."

Mai nodded sharply, and the four of them burst into the hangar on full attack, which quickly gave way to full defense as a small knot of soldiers unleashed suppressive gunfire at them. Far away, on the other side of the ship, Mai caught a glimpse of orange fire and sparkling water - good, the others were already moving forward. All they had to do was draw attention.

She waited, counting the time for the clip to run out on full-automatic - four seconds - and then stood and fired three bolts in three precise places, quickly falling back behind cover as the three dead guards were replaced by new ones. Four seconds, and then Sokka stood and fired three powerful shotgun blasts, straight through the cover the guards were hiding behind. He ran forward, shooting several more times, and then called to them. Mai and Ty Lee joined him at the wall he was using as their new cover.

"Look," he muttered, pointing to the other side of the hangar. There were guards lining up to take on Jet's crew, having realized that the second shuttle was the bluff. "Looks like we're taking on his job. Let's move, before they start coming for us."

Mai nodded, pointing to the halls the soldiers were pouring from. "Those will lead to the interior. We should work our way up the sides. Fewer soldiers and narrower passes. It's our best chance."

"Sounds good," Sokka replied, and the three of them began moving.

* * *

"You will begin with _Kundalini,_ the base chakra," Guru Pathik explained. "This is connected to your survival instinct, and it is blocked by fear. To unlock it, you must allow yourself to let go of stability, to risk ultimately and without fear. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Aang replied, tension knotting in the back of his head.

"Good," Pathik said, and then continued quickly, like he was running short of time. "The second chakra is _Swadhisthana,_ the sacral chakra. This governs pleasure, and it is blocked by guilt. To unlock it, you must let go of your sorrows, allow them to be washed away. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Good," he repeated, and the tension within Aang coiled tighter around him. Something was happening in the physical world, and he needed to be there for it, but he couldn't go until he had the information he needed from Pathik, or else he'd be useless. "The third chakra is _Manipura,_ the solar plexus. It governs your willpower, and is blocked by shame. To unlock it, you must recognize your greatest failures and let go of them. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Aang answered, privately thinking that he was most worried about that first one, since right now, he was _terrified,_ Azula's threat still ringing harsh in his ears.

"Good," Pathik said again, and then continued. "The fourth chakra is _Anahata,_ the heart chakra. It governs your love, and is blocked by grief. To unlock it, you must let go of the memories that haunt you. Understand?" he asked, and then went on without waiting for an answer. "The fifth chakra is _Vishudda,_ the throat chakra. It governs truth, and is blocked by lies. To unlock it, you must accept the lies you have told and been told, and let go of the guilt and injustice caused by them. The sixth chakra is _Ajna,_ the brow chakra. It governs insight, and is blocked by illusions, particularly the illusion of separation. To unlock it, you must realize that everything is connected and nothing exists alone. Do you understand?"

Aang nodded, and Pathik continued, voice speeding up as though he, too, knew that they were running out of time and Aang had to get back to the real world.

"Last is _Sahasrara,_ the crown chakra. It governs pure energy and is blocked by earthly attachments. To unlock it, you must recognize the things that bind you to this world and release yourself from them. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he replied, and then woke up abruptly in the metal room he had been in before. Distantly, he heard shouts and gunfire and a loud, awful sound of metal tearing against metal, and he knew that his friends had come for him. He took a deep breath to still the pounding of his heart. Begin with _Kundalini,_ the guru had said - let go of fear.

But how? He was terrified, alone in a stark metal room, in Azula's clutches, with the sounds of a battle going on all around him - how could he let go of fear?

* * *

Diana choked back a cough as she crawled through the dust of the vent - part of her felt bad for leaving them behind, but it wasn't in her to just walk into gunfire like a _moron._ She _had_ meant it when she'd said that she'd fight with them, but she had no intentions of _dying_ with them. Her plan was much simpler: get to the prison block while everyone else was occupied with the primary attack. She made sure to crawl _in_ to the ship; the last thing she wanted was to get torn apart by _Freedom_ making its violent docking.

Unfortunately, the air vents were cramped and dusty, with a lot of dead ends where it narrowed too thin to get into and a constant rush of frigid air, but she kept crawling - it wasn't the first time she'd taken to a ventilation system to bypass guards or security. It was one of those things that had become so commonplace in fiction that no one believed it possible anymore, but if she was good at anything, it was using other people's misconceptions against them.

She considered it her greatest strength... or used to, at any rate.

Her mother had always believed in something _more_ than the rage that led to war - Mother had believed in peacemaking, in compromising, in finding ways to stop the fighting before it had the chance to kill anyone. She had always thought it naive, and although she still didn't think that assessment was wrong, she was starting to think there was something to be said for idealism.

Much as Diana's blood boiled for revenge, it left an acrid taste on Yue's tongue.

Mother wouldn't have asked for vengeance; in fact, she would have been angry at the notion.

Mother would have fought for Aang. And for that, Yue wanted to save the Avatar from the Fire Nation. It would probably be the last thing she ever did, but considering her history, she didn't think it would be such a bad way to go: the consummate liar, the failed Companion turned con artist, offering the ultimate sacrifice. It wasn't frightening. If anything, it was fate.

The legends said that her namesake, the moon goddess of the Water Tribe, had been a girl once, born with brilliant white hair, a gift from the previous moon goddess - but less a boon and more a _debt:_ the moon goddess saved Yue's life as a child, and for that, Yue's life could never be her own.

Some time later, after she had married and had her own white-haired daughter and maybe even forgot what she owed, the Fire Nation had broken through the Water Tribe's defenses and killed the moon goddess, and so Yue's debt was called in. Dutifully, she had sacrificed herself to take the dead goddess's place.

Diana had been taught all about Yue's nobility and bravery and selflessness and goodness, but all she had ever read from the tale was that nothing came without a price. And besides, people talked about the nobility of her sacrifice like she had been given any choice - how could someone be brave for never being allowed to choose?

She had always felt like her name and her hair were a sick joke played by a cruel god - people expected things from a white-haired Water Tribe woman named Yue, they expected bravery and goodness and that capability of tragic, helpless sacrifice that had cemented the goddess's name in memory, and she had none of those. Didn't want any of them, either. Her independence was all she could call hers; she made the decision years ago to live her own life on her own, no matter how much it hurt her.

The goddess Yue was an example of everything she wasn't, of the path she had refused to follow. It was a name she neither wanted nor deserved, so she'd stopped calling herself Yue entirely, taken on name after name, a new one for each con she pulled until the name Yue was nothing but an old wound that still ached when it rained - she was Diana, Nanna, Ceridwen, Phoebe, Artemis, Selene, Tsuki, a thousand others, but never Yue.

Yue was something sacred... and something monstrous.

Yue was her mother's daughter, and now, Malina's body cold and stiff and left behind on the docks of Beaumonde - now, she had her own debt to repay, an apology several years and a thousand lifetimes too late, a fate that would torture her if she tried to escape it and kill her if she didn't. Twenty-five years of running, only to end up where she started, out of choices and forced to sacrifice; the curse woven into her hair. It was either a watershed moment, or an event horizon.

"Fine," she whispered, too quiet even for herself to hear, "You win, I give up." She wriggled into the main vent and was hit with a hard blast of cold air that took her breath away, and she had to turn before she could begin crawling up the ladder - left there from when the ship was constructed - that would take her all the way to the top. "Okay, Yue," she gasped, closing her eyes and burying her face in her sleeve to catch her breath against the air, "this is what you want from me. So you can _damn well_ help me get there."

The air cut off abruptly.


	13. 12. Serenity

On _Desdemona_

Jet cursed as Katara's water formed into a wall of ice to block the gunfire. So much for bluffing the bad guys - he'd have to hope that one of the other teams just happened to get lucky and stumble across the prison block.

Katara's ice shattered in the blast of a grenade, and she quickly pulled all the shards into another wall. "Jet, I can't do this forever!" she cried, and looked to Toph, who was up to her elbows in the wall, tinkering with the locking mechanism to clear their path to Aang. "We have to come up with something else!"

"I'm almost done here," Toph yelled, ducking as another grenade shattered Katara's ice wall, vaporizing another large amount of her water and showering them with ice. She pulled the remnants into another wall, but this one was smaller and thinner, probably the last one she could risk putting up - if she wasted any more water, she'd have nothing left to fight or heal with. "Got it!" Toph shouted as a third grenade struck. Katara tugged on all the water she could get to, but it was much, much less than she'd started with.

"Push forward," he yelled, unloading a full clip into the guards firing on them. He cursed as a bullet slashed across his thigh and drew a disproportionately large amount of blood, barely managing to get behind a wall, wincing in pain. Katara was there immediately, holding her hand over the wound, using the remnants of her water and quite a bit of his own blood to heal it. "That's a neat trick," he gasped, shaking his head to clear it, and pulled out a cigarette. "Hey, Sparky, you gonna give me a light this time, or what?"

Zuko shot him an incredulous look from the other side of the doorway.

"Tch, fine," he growled, pulling out a match and lighting the cigarette. He paused for a moment to let the nicotine hit his system, counting four seconds for the nearest gun's suppressive fire to run out, and then turned and began unloading shotgun shells into the nearest guard, taking what little aim he could before ducking behind the wall again. "That was a hell of a waste," he grunted around the precariously dangling cigarette, then turned and shot again until the guards reloaded or were replaced. "They won't keep this up," he muttered, taking a deep drag. "Waste of everyone's gorram time. _Four,"_ he hissed, turning and getting out three more shells (all of which again went wide) before another shot hit him in the side. " _Cào_ ," he snapped, and slid against the wall again as Katara laid her hand over his side, glaring at him.

"You can't keep doing this, you'll go into shock," she snapped.

"You kiddin'?" he asked lightly, grinning against a growing delirium. "Me and this wall, we're becomin' best o' friends." When the annoyance on her face shifted to worry, he rolled his eyes. "Can't a guy joke around when he's gettin' hit with eight different kinds o' bullets? Relax, I'll be fine. 'Sides, I don't have to keep doin' this," he replied, glancing across the doorway. "Sparks, give us some fire, Toph, hit the ground and stay there. Katara, you and Sparky watch our backs."

He and Toph ducked to the ground at the same time that Zuko sent a blast of fire into the hallway, and the two of them belly-crawled over to the guards while they were busy trying to fight the two benders. Toph was on the same wavelength as him, and hit the ground with her palm, bringing the metal flooring up to knock all of the soldiers over at once. Before they could react, he was on his feet, pumping shells into as many guards as he had time and ammunition to put down, while Toph used her earthbending to trap or kill the ones he didn't have a chance to shoot.

"Let's move!" he called, and Katara and Zuko followed him deeper into the ship.

* * *

Azula, leaning against the door to Aang's prison - her very own practice room - smiled.

It wasn't part of her plan that the Avatar's little friends attack her; to be honest, she didn't actually have anything at all to gain by baiting them here, except perhaps the chance to kill a few of them before the panic cleared and they could start planning effectively.

In fact, she had told them the whole truth - and nothing but the truth - when she had said that it would really liven up the boredom. It was a long ride from Beaumonde to Sihnon, and in Azula's experience, uneventful journeys lead to _very_ eventful destinations, so better to draw out the wild cards in the deck before they had a chance to do any damage to her plans.

"You know," she said cheerfully. "I'll make a bet with you, Avatar. Now, before you get the wrong idea," she added, "I'm not a gambler. This is a special exception, just for you. So, let's say... I'll give you, hmm... how about one deadly weapon per crew member I kill today? It'll be nice and fair," she trilled sweetly, not really caring if he was listening or screaming or catatonic. "The more people I get to kill, the more tools you'll get to avenge their deaths. Sound fun?"

He didn't answer, but then, she hadn't expected him to.

Zuzu had never liked her games, either.

* * *

They hit the stairwell at a hard run, leaving the door open behind them but taking places on the walls beside it. When the guards followed them, Ty Lee was on them, twisting in the air like the acrobat she was, kicking with her feet and slashing with the fans, injuring the first three while Sokka and Mai shot the four following, before Ty Lee could even hit the ground. She used her body more effectively as a weapon than she did the fans, struggling to cut and stab using them anything like Suki had. When it started to get messy, Mai finished off the two remaining.

"This looks so much easier when Suki does it," she muttered, stuffing the fans into her belt and wiping her bloody hands compulsively on her pants. Mai shrugged.

"Practice makes perfect. Next time, stick to your acrobatics. They worked better."

"Okay," Sokka said, "he'll be in the prison block, any ideas where that'll be?"

"The top, probably," Mai replied, reloading her crossbow. "Always keep prisoners as far away from the hangar as possible."

"That's a long way," Ty Lee said, peering into the stairs. "Lots of doors, too. It'll take way too long to get up there," she mused, and Mai sighed heavily.

"Then what do you suggest we do?" she snapped, while Sokka started rigging a grenade to go off if the door was opened again. "Fly?"

Ty Lee shot her a glare. "No, we can climb. Didn't you ever try to use the banisters instead of the stairs when you were a kid?"

"No," Mai replied at the same time that Sokka said, "Yes."

"It'll leave us with less cover, though," Sokka muttered, and Ty Lee leaned further into the stairwell intently.

"But it'll get us there _way_ faster," she said seriously. "Time isn't really on our side, you know?"

"You make a compelling argument," he replied, glaring at the ungraceful heap of wires and repurposed fishing line that he had used to secure the door.

"Your art leaves something to be desired," Mai drawled, clenching and unclenching her fingers as a hard shaking set into them, already-weak nerves and anxiety turning themselves into pain under her skin, a sensation she was only starting to get used to.

_"Wow,_ let me tell you how much I appreciate sarcasm when I'm about to die," Sokka replied brightly, and without any hint of irony. "Let's get moving, we've got a lot of ground to cover. Hey, Di - where is Diana?" he asked, eyes closed and one hand already over his face.

"She _bailed_ on us! We needed her and she left!" Ty Lee cried, and Mai shook her head.

"Forget her, let's just go," she barked, leading the way up several levels until they heard the explosion from below, followed by a lot of shouting and a few errant gunshots. "Hurry!" Mai hissed, and they began racing for the top at full tilt.

"Jet," Sokka snapped into his communicator, "we're making for the top, hold the bottom."

"Roger," Jet replied. A few more shots rang out from below, but they had enough of a head-start to avoid getting shot, provided they kept up the breakneck pace they were going. Ty Lee quickly gave up on the stairs altogether and began her banister-leaping, making full use of her gymnastic training. Grudgingly, Mai had to admit that she was right: Ty Lee was moving up _fast,_ fast enough that if they'd started off moving like that, they wouldn't have to worry about the people following them.

But Sokka was right, too: around ten levels above them, Ty Lee let out a shriek and pulled off some complicated acrobatic move (that probably wasn't part of any kind of training) to dodge a shock of blue fire that lanced across the opening and licked against the opposite wall. Sokka let out a string of curses behind her as more bullets struck much closer, and turned around to cover her back as she ran for Ty Lee.

She was almost there - one level below - when Ty Lee cried out again, and they hit the same corner at almost the same time, Ty Lee with a brutal open burn covering most of her abdomen and Mai out of breath and shaking so hard she felt like her skin was about to come off.

"Well, if it isn't Sun Mai!" Azula trilled, as she pulled up her crossbow and took ragged aim, but the princess just clicked her tongue and shot out another burst of fire almost lazily, that Mai barely managed to dodge, flattening against the wall. She glanced behind her, to see Sokka hoisting Ty Lee over one shoulder, and then back to Azula, shooting the crossbow as she turned and feeling a split second's gratification as it grazed her cheek, leaving a mark to match the ones that Ty Lee had put on her.

All shallow cuts that barely bled, but they were a moral victories at least, little as those were worth.

Azula touched her cheek and checked her finger for blood before laughing outright and showing her white, unmarred hands to Mai. "Do you feel accomplished, Mai?" she asked, snickering. "Oh," she sighed. "I was going to kill you, but that's really - " she paused to laugh again " - that's so... _hilariously_ pathetic, I have to - "

Mai cut her off with a trio of tiny bolts discharged from her wrist.

They should have hit.

Mai had _perfect_ aim, she _never_ missed with a thrown object, she _always_ landed dead on target. They all _should_ have hit, but her nerves were convulsing erratically under her skin and she couldn't hold her hands steady; still, one embedded itself deep in Azula's shoulder and another narrowly missed her neck. Azula cried out in pain, turned on her in anger, and then tilted her head in calculation.

She watched as the pieces fell into place in Azula's head, as pieces of Mai's own mask began to crumble under the weight.

"Mai never misses," Azula said softly, and then smiled. "You just keep giving me reasons not to kill you, don't you? I could do it now, but I really think I prefer the thought of taking you prisoner and watching you slowly become a vegetable and drool yourself to death."

Mai let out a growl like a wounded animal and drew three stilettos up into her right hand, poised to attack, but Azula kept smiling and _smiling_ and the gunfire was right up beneath them and -

They were trapped.

The thin knives were hard between her fingers and she tried to focus on the edges digging into her gloves; if there was no escape and no time for another attack, she should make this last one count.

She shifted her footing, judged Azula's agility, and threw all three.

* * *

Katara pulled the water into the pentapus form, and lashed out at everyone around her while Zuko sent blast after blast of fire - but it seemed like they couldn't make any headway. Every time she knocked someone down, someone else would rise up to take their place. Toph was beating down everything she could get to, but she was forced to crawl or stagger flushed against the wall, so her range was limited. Of all of them, it seemed like Jet was the only one who could consistently do much damage, but with his rapidly draining stock of ammunition, he was becoming less and less effective by the minute.

She saw blood bloom on Toph's shirt, but the way she had turned made it clear that the bullet had only grazed her; still, Katara made her way over to heal her. She couldn't do much offensively in the chaos and flickering light - at least this was making some kind of difference.

"Thanks," Toph gasped, slamming her heel onto the ground. "Sparky's been hit," she said, bringing up a ridge of metal to cover her as she went to Zuko, and then seemed to think that this was a pretty good idea and began wrenching further ridges into the metal, chasing soldiers as they tried to dodge.

"Here," she breathed, using his blood and what little water she had left to heal the wound in his stomach. Haru would still need to attend to it to remove the bullet, but at least he wouldn't bleed out. Zuko looked up and then grabbed her, jerking her down to the ground as a grenade went off somewhere to their left; she felt shrapnel hit him, but he protected her with his body.

" _Tā māde!_ " he hissed, and she turned so that she could see the warped piece of metal sticking out of his back. In one movement, she pulled it out and then placed her hand over the wound, healing it as well as she could - but time was running out. He was starting to show signs of shock setting in; she could hold it at bay with healing for a while, but not much longer, and if any of them went into shock in this place, they were all dead.

"Katara!" Toph yelled, bringing up another ridge through their attackers and sending their shots wide. "Jet!"

She gasped, already feeling spent from all the hasty waterbending and healing she was having to do, and thanked all the gods she knew of that she and Aang had practiced and practiced that healing scroll. She crawled over to Jet and began healing his third mortal wound - he, too, would need Haru's attention, and like Zuko, he was lagging with blood loss, and shock had already started to set in. "Jet," she said in a low voice, "I don't think we can make any more headway."

"Just keep fighting," he replied through gritted teeth, then shook his head to clear it and reloaded his weapon while he had the chance to. Katara pulled up the blood that was now soaking the ground and formed it into a thick, sluggish pentapus, and she managed to take two men out before Toph called again and she had to drop the offensive to heal.

It was clear - they were at an impasse with their opposition. The tower just had too many people, and they didn't have enough. She whispered a prayer to the moon goddess - _please let someone get through_.

* * *

Bee's team razed the command center, shooting everything - the walls, the doors, the control panels, the lights, the chairs - her strategy was a bastardization of the playground bully's tactic: when shunned from a game, break everyone's toys so no one else can play, either. It was a dirty, destructive gambit, but it was also the best plan for dealing with a situation in which winning was such an outside chance that it paid to bet on losing.

Sokka and Jet's short conversation over the communicators told her that something must have gone wrong in the hangar if Sokka's team was now making for the prison block. "We go for the hangar," she said, motioning behind her. "They'll need backup."

Before they could even make it into the hall, there was another crackle at her ear - Sokka, again. All he said this time was, "Tell Suki I love her," and Bee sighed.

"Change of plans," she yelled. "We're hitting the main stairwell. We got us a Water Tribe idiot to save."

Longshot nodded, and they ran for the stairwell, firing without abandon. Bee hit the stairs, wrenching open the door and staring a whole battalion of Alliance men in the face. She had enough time to smile at Longshot before she ran in, tackling the first man and leading to a chain reaction that resulted in about half of the soldiers falling down the stairs in a domino effect, leaving her on the other side of the stairs, pinned into a corner by two halves of a battalion.

She threw one concussion grenade down the stairs as Longshot began picking off the men between them one by one with his trademark accuracy; she ducked against the corner as the grenade blew, feeling shrapnel tear into her left side - luckily, she was wearing armor under her spacesuit - they all were - but her left leg and arm weren't quite so lucky. But hell, she thought, she was right-handed, and the wounds were less of a threat than the guns pointed at her, so she didn't bother to take inventory of the injuries or give in to the pain.

Bee was good at ignoring unimportant details and paying attention to the big picture.

This was for the whole 'Verse, for a cause even bigger and more important than Independence. She turned around, firing her rifle with one arm and leaning her injured left side hard against the wall, as much defense as she'd get from this position - and then Longshot met her, followed by Pipsqueak and the Duke, each firing relentlessly into the growing crowd beneath them. Above her, she caught a glimpse of blue fire and then there was movement coming at them - Sokka's team, repelled by the princess and given the opening they needed to get through the battalion.

The princess simply leaped into the center of the stairwell, jetting fire from her hands and feet like Zuko had done at St. Albans, coming to a perfectly calm stop on the banister in front of her.

"Boo," she said, grinning in spite of several shallow cuts, a bolt embedded at least two inches deep in her shoulder, and three of Mai's stilettos tracing a deadly-looking diagonal from one shoulder to the opposite hip. Bee fired, and it was a perfect shot except that the princess somehow dodged in between Bee raising the gun and firing it, and jetted back up the stairwell like a ghost, unconcerned with killing them, just ensuring that they failed to reach Aang. Why? Why not kill them now and be done with it? Why had she even let them come?

What game was Azula playing?

Sokka reached them then, carrying a barely-conscious and badly burned Ty Lee on his back (he was clutching the golden fans, now blood-stained, in his left hand), flanked by a gasping and oddly discomposed Mai, whose top was scorched but whose burns didn't look severe, covering his retreat. They were vastly outnumbered, and more were pouring into the stairs beneath them. She glanced at the rifle in her right hand - it was almost out of ammo, and she didn't have the space or the time to reload.

Bee took a deep breath and closed her eyes - for one hopelessly long second, she was back at Serenity Valley, listening to the report from command, saying that it was too hot, they were pulling out. She wasn't one to surrender, even now, but Bee wasn't _stupid_ \- she knew what impossible and suicidal looked like.

"Back through the command center," she snapped, opening her eyes again. "Sokka, follow us, we're getting back to the ship. Jet," she said into the comm link, "Sokka's team and I are overwhelmed, Azula's guarding him personally. We can't get him."

* * *

"Don't you dare say that to me," Jet snarled through the comm, but he knew in his gut that she wouldn't have sounded the retreat if she had thought there was any chance. _"Shit,"_ he growled, and then looked to Toph, Zuko, and Katara. They were all outnumbered way past reasonable - they couldn't even make it to the stairs! - and Katara had already healed at least two mortal wounds for each of them, they'd all been hit so much that he was pretty sure there was enough of their blood on the floor to fill up at least one other person... they were tapped out. Push it any longer, and they wouldn't make it back at all. Already, they were barely standing, with Katara as the only one with a clear head.

He slumped against the wall - _They ain't comin. We're to lay down arms_ \- and then stood straighter. "Roger," he said gravely. "Retreat," he said, and Toph hit the wall so hard she almost took it down.

"We've gotta get Aang!" she shrieked. "He's still trapped!"

" _I said retreat_ ," he said, voice low and dangerous - this was the worst part of the job he'd never wanted and never asked for but fallen into just the same. He could lead a thousand charges forward, but he'd never gotten the hang of the backward run. He tried to shake it off, because this wasn't the end, even when it sure as hell felt like it. "We regroup, find another way in. We can't get him like this. It was a risky thing from the start."

He shot a few more times at the sea of guards between them and the stairwell, more out of spite than anything else, and then nodded at Katara. "Give us cover," he said, and she opened her mouth to protest, but then nodded and used the last of her water - and more than a little blood from the ground - to put up a wall between them, and then he motioned back the way they had come. "Hurry, that won't hold long. Grab helmets from those assholes," he added, motioning to the bodies strewn about. "Don't matter what kind, just so long as it covers your face and stops air from gettin' sucked outta you."

"Jet, there's still more we can do!" Toph cried, and he grabbed her by the arm.

"Listen to me, Toph," he said, "gettin' Aang ain't on the table anymore, and we stay any longer, we'll never get ourselves out either. You think you can help Aang if you're dead? What's your plan for that, huh? Come back as a ghost?" She snarled at him, and he released her arm. "You're coming with us, like it or not," he snapped, wrenching the helmet off one of the dead guards and pulling it over his head. "If I have to knock you out and drag you back to the ship myself."

She clenched her jaw, but followed him. He motioned for Katara and Zuko to make for the far shuttle, while he and Toph would seal the hangar and take the closer shuttle. Mouth turned in a vicious sneer, Toph opened the panel she'd tinkered with before and plucked a few wires, causing the doors to slam shut. She didn't bother to close the panel again.

They ran for the shuttle as Katara and Zuko bolted for Mai's, and he saw the blast doors shaking under the weight of grenades - he prayed to the god he'd given up on at Serenity Valley that the others were safe, and took off in the shuttle, racing back through the gunships trying to blockade their exit - he pulled it down and veered hard to avoid the bullets - on the other side of the hangar, he saw the other shuttle fly out, going up and dodging similarly to him, and he looked around desperately for the ship. There was no way they'd survive long in this without heavy artillery helping them out.

Luckily, the ship wrenched itself out of the Tower above them, and he saw the blinding white flash from Maria take out a whole block of gunships. Katara's shuttle was closer, and he watched it land before he began climbing up. Maria thinned the crowd around him several times, as close as Pipsqueak dares to shoot her, until he finally landed the shuttle in its port and they flew away at hard burn.

They had failed.

Again.

* * *

On _Desdemona_

The door opened as he was midway through visualizing his grief and trying to let it go. Azula leaned against the doorframe, with a savage sort of smile on her face.

"You can relax, Avatar," she said mockingly. "Everything's been taken care of."

_No!_

He swallowed hard on the power, the rage, the chaos within - he certainly couldn't lose control now, alone in Azula's hands and with no help coming. She walked in and peered at him; up close, he could see spots of blood on her clothing, and a small, dark part of him hoped they _hurt._ "Hmm," she said lightly, "I'll be honest: I expected you to start glowing."

"Not for you," he replied through gritted teeth, and tried to continue visualizing grief. They'd try again - they would, he knew it, and he had to be ready when they did. He had failed them this time, but next time... next time, he would join them, and save them, and he hoped that they were all okay, that no one had died trying to save him. Katara, Toph... he closed his eyes and willed the tears not to fall, at least not in front of Azula.

For being the bearer of phenomenal cosmic power, he thought, he certainly seemed to fail a lot.

"Well, perhaps you will for my father, then," she mused, leaning against the wall. "He's just _dying_ to meet you. It will be a while, though," she continued dismissively. "Your friends left quite a mess for me to clean up." She leaned down to speak conspiratorially in his ear, "We'll talk in a few hours about how many weapons I owe you, hmm? I really can't wait to see which ones you choose, you'd be amazed at how much someone's weapon of choice tells you about them. I have you pegged as a blunt object kind of person," she said, stepping back and smiling like they were friends, "but I've been surprised before."

She smirked as she walked out, and the door clicked closed behind her - and then a vent on the floor opened and a dust-covered Diana crawled through it into the room, out of breath as she massaged her limbs absently.

"I had to wait for her to go," she said quietly. He stared at her for a moment.

"They failed, they had to retreat - you're stuck here!" he whispered, and she nodded.

"I know," she replied, and then smiled, her eyes brighter blue than he remembered them being. "I'm the one who's gonna get you out of here, Avatar."


	14. Postlude: Catacombs

_postlude_

At the Fire Nation palace on Sihnon

The Parliament was displeased to hear that their best Operative - and all of his men - had been tragically killed in the fight to take the Avatar from the fugitives who had gotten a hold of him, and were even more displeased that the princess herself had been injured by one of the Fire Nation's highest nobility who had become a traitor, but the fact that he was in their possession soothed most of their tempers. Azula smirked as two of her soldiers dragged the Avatar - chained, gagged, and bound - into the throne room where her father sat arrogantly on her throne, flanked by the entire Parliament.

"Princess Azula," the Prime Minister of Londinium said, "you have our gratitude in capturing this threat to our Alliance. The Fire Lord has requested that he be held in the cells beneath the palace here - does anyone object?"

Everyone nodded approvingly, and Azula bowed. Her father finally left the throne and joined her, and together, they walked the Avatar down into the palace. It had been built around the ship that had brought them from Earth That Was, and the catacombs were a picture of her ancestors' lives, some five hundred years ago - there had been some outcry to transform it into a monument, the way that Londinium had a monument to their ancestors from Earth That Was, but Azula found it more fitting as a graveyard.

What use were monuments to the dead? In the catacombs, her ancestors' bones were resting undisturbed, not gawked at by a hundred million tourists under the guise of history. But trust Londinium's citizens to misunderstand the concept of "respecting the dead" - they thought it was about abstract memory rather than tangible spirits, an antiseptic view of the world that only worked when the age and art of bending were swept neatly under the rug.

They needed someone to set them right.

The Parliament took the Avatar to the deepest cell, what had been the hold of the ship that had carried several generations of her ancestors - where they had placed their mutinies, their traitors, their thieves - and shackled him to the wall of the tiny, cramped room. He went without a struggle, staring blankly ahead, already absent from his situation: the last resort of the doomed.

She locked the door with a deliberate finality and held up the key so that everyone else could see it.

"This is the _only_ key to this room," she said, for the benefit of non-Sihnon natives. "Without it, this door _does not_ open, no matter how you tinker with the lock or play around with it - even that earthbender girl can't break _this_ lock." She smiled, and slipped it into her pocket. "Ladies, Gentlemen, and Father," she said congenially, smiling. "The Avatar is _officially_ subdued."

**end of book two**


End file.
